g Easier! Making Everythin
6th Edition
™
t s e T E R G e h T ®
Learn to: • Get your best possible score • Understand the latest changes to the GRE • Combat your test-taking anxiety • Use breaks wisely and save time on the test
Suzee Vlk Michelle Rose Gilman Veronica Saydak Authors of ACT For Dummies, 4th Edition
®
The GRE Test FOR
DUMmIES
‰
6TH
EDITION
®
The GRE Test FOR
DUMmIES
‰
6TH
EDITION
by Michelle Rose Gilman, Veronica Saydak, and Suzee Vlk Author of The SAT I For Dummies,The ACT For Dummies, The GMAT For Dummies
The GRE® Test For Dummies®, 6th Edition Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 909 Third Avenue New York, NY 10022 www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www. wiley.com/go/permissions. Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: WHILE THE PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR HAVE USED THEIR BEST EFFORTS IN PREPARING THIS BOOK, THEY MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES REPRESENTATIVES OR WRITTEN SALES MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR SITUATION. YOU SHOULD CONSULT WITH A PROFESSIONAL WHERE APPROPRIATE. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFIT OR ANY OTHER COMMERCIAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR OTHER DAMAGES. For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Control Number: 2007926011 10-digit ISBN: 0-470-00919-5 13-digit ISBN: 978-0-470-00919-2 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Authors Michelle Rose Gilman “I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one heck of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.” — E.B. White Michelle Rose Gilman is proud to be known as Noah’s mom (Hi, Noah!). A graduate of the University of South Florida, Michelle found her niche early — at 19 she was already working with emotionally disturbed and learning-disabled students in hospital settings. At 21, she made the trek to California. There she discovered her passion for helping teenage students become more successful in school and life. What started as a small tutoring business in the garage of her California home quickly expanded and grew to the point where traffic control was necessary on her residential street. Today, Michelle is the Founder and CEO of the Fusion Learning Center/Fusion Academy, a private school and tutoring/test-prep facility in Solana Beach, California, serving more than 2,000 students per year. She has taught tens of thousands of students since 1988. In her spare time, Michelle created the Mentoring Approach to Learning and authored The ACT For Dummies, Pre-Calculus For Dummies, AP Biology For Dummies, AP Chemistry For Dummies, Chemistry Workbook For Dummies, and Pre-Calculus Workbook For Dummies. She currently specializes in motivating the unmotivatable adolescent, comforting shell-shocked parents, and assisting her staff of 27 teachers. Michelle lives by the following motto: “There are people content with longing; I am not one of them.”
Veronica Saydak Veronica graduated from the University of San Diego with a Bachelors Degree in English. She found her real education in travel and seeing the world. She has traveled to more than a dozen countries, studying various cultures through their literature and lifestyles. She has been a highly coveted English teacher, specializing in writing, for more than seven years. Currently, Veronica is the English Department Head at Fusion Learning Center/Fusion Academy, where she is responsible for overseeing a staff of English teachers and ensuring high educational standards, as well as teaching her students on a one-to-one basis. Her wit and humor might not solve the world’s problems, but they definitely make the world feel lighter. She is the coauthor of The ACT For Dummies. Veronica takes the following advice from one of her favorite authors, Goethe: “Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.”
Suzee Vlk “I’m not a complete idiot. Parts of me are missing.” Although more likely to admit to being a used-car salesperson, Suzee Vlk was a test-prep specialist from 1975 until her death in 2003, working her way through graduate business school and law school teaching courses in ACT, SAT I, GRE, GMAT, and LSAT preparation. By her own description, Suzee found the paranoia and take-no-prisoners mindset required for doing well on the ACT a big help in developing cutthroat tactics to use in the boardroom or courtroom. Eventually, she became president of Suzee Vlk Test Prep and taught thousands of students in dozens of courses at universities and private corporations. She wrote material used in SAT and GRE preparation software and videos, and her prep books for the ACT and other standardized exams have been published worldwide. Suzee lived by the following motto, which she delighted in sharing with others: “Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change ready.”
Dedication This book is humbly dedicated to the thousands of students who have, over the years, passed through the Fusion Learning Center/Fusion Academy. When the teacher is ready, the right student appears. You have taught us well. And to the memory of Suzee Vlk, the original author, whose humor, wit, and intelligence live on in these pages.
Author Acknowledgments We would like to thank agent Bill Gladstone of Waterside Productions in Cardiff, California, for giving us the opportunity to revise this book. Special thanks to Christopher Burger (the Book Fairy) for being a delightful perfectionist and for meticulously reviewing and updating the math sections. Additionally, thanks to Peter Mikulecky, our technical editor, who strived to get us to try to be as smart as him (it didn’t work). Much thanks also to Natalie Harris for deciphering the truth amongst the manuscript chaos. Finally, a shoutout to Lindsay Lefevere, our acquisitions editor, who, for reasons unknown, continues to want to work with us.
Publisher’s Acknowledgments We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/. Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following: Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development
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Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher, Consumer Dummies Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director, Consumer Dummies Kristin Ferguson-Wagstaffe, Product Development Director, Consumer Dummies Ensley Eikenburg, Associate Publisher, Travel Kelly Regan, Editorial Director, Travel Publishing for Technology Dummies Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology/General User Composition Services Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
Contents at a Glance Introduction.................................................................................1 Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective.................7 Chapter 1: Know Your Enemy: What the GRE Looks Like .......................................................................9 Chapter 2: Knowledge Is Power: Getting the Advantage.......................................................................17 Chapter 3: Getting Familiar with the Computerized GRE......................................................................25 Chapter 4: Starting with the Easy Stuff: Analogies.................................................................................29 Chapter 5: The Dirty Dozen: Analogy Practice Questions ....................................................................37
Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions ..............................45 Chapter 6: If Opposites Attract, Why Are Antonyms So Repulsive?....................................................47 Chapter 7: Unattractive Opposites: Antonym Practice Questions ......................................................53 Chapter 8: Finishing What You Start: Sentence Completions...............................................................59 Chapter 9: Reality Check: Sentence Completion Practice Questions..................................................69 Chapter 10: Readings That Can Affect Your Future: Blood Pressure, Astrology, and the GRE.........73 Chapter 11: Words to Help You Score: GRE Vocabulary........................................................................87 Chapter 12: Practice What We Preach: Reading Comprehension Practice Questions ......................97
Part III: Two Years of Math in a Handful of Pages: The Dreaded Math Review.........................................................103 Chapter 13: More Figures than a Beauty Pageant: Geometry Review ...............................................105 Chapter 14: Gotta Catch Some (Xs, Ys, and) Zs: Algebra and Other Sleeping Aids.........................127 Chapter 15: Miscellaneous Math You Probably Already Know ..........................................................143
Part IV: Your Number’s Up: Math Questions ...............................169 Chapter 16: The Incomparable Quantitative Comparisons ................................................................171 Chapter 17: Putting It All Together: QC Practice Questions ...............................................................183 Chapter 18: Real Math at Last: Problem Solving ..................................................................................189 Chapter 19: A Chance to Show Off: Problem Solving Practice Questions.........................................193
Part V: Getting into Analysis: Analytical Writing .......................197 Chapter 20: Analytical Writing................................................................................................................199 Chapter 21: Do You Have the Write Stuff? Analytical Writing Practice Questions...........................209
Part VI: It All Comes Down to This: Full-Length Practice GREs ....217 Chapter 22: How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Day, Part I: Practice Exam 1...........................................219 Chapter 23: Practice Exam 1: Answers and Explanations ...................................................................245 Chapter 24: How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Day, Part II: Practice Exam 2..........................................259 Chapter 25: Practice Exam 2: Answers and Explanations ...................................................................289
Part VII: The Part of Tens..........................................................303 Chapter 26: Ten False Rumors about the GRE......................................................................................305 Chapter 27: Ten Stupid Ways to Mess Up Your GRE ............................................................................309 Chapter 28: Ten Relaxation Techniques to Try before and during the GRE.....................................313
Index.......................................................................................317
Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................1 About This Book.........................................................................................................................1 Pardon Me for Having a Life: Who Has Time for This?..........................................................2 Time required to go through the GRE lectures ............................................................3 Time required to go through the practice GREs ..........................................................3 How This Book Is Organized.....................................................................................................4 Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective ............................................4 Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions ..............................................................4 Part III: Two Years of Math in a Handful of Pages: The Dreaded Math Review ........4 Part IV: Your Number’s Up: Math Questions.................................................................4 Part V: Getting into Analysis: Analytical Writing..........................................................4 Part VI: It All Comes Down to This: Full-Length Practice GREs..................................4 Part VII: The Part of Tens ................................................................................................5 Icons and Conventions Used in This Book .............................................................................5
Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective .................7 Chapter 1: Know Your Enemy: What the GRE Looks Like ................................................9 Looking at the Breakdown (To Avoid Having One!).............................................................10 Scoring 101................................................................................................................................11 Figuring out your scores ...............................................................................................11 Knowing how your scores measure up .......................................................................12 Playing the guessing game ............................................................................................12 Discovering the number of correct answers you need for specific scores ............12 Understanding When Your Answers Don’t Count: The Possible Unscored Section........13 Gimme a Break! The GRE Intermissions................................................................................14
Chapter 2: Knowledge Is Power: Getting the Advantage..............................................17 Beating the Clock: Tips on Timing .........................................................................................17 Scratching like a Crazed Chicken...........................................................................................18 Packing Your Bags on Test Day ..............................................................................................18 You Can’t Take It with You ......................................................................................................19 Déjà Vu: Repeating the Test ....................................................................................................20 Experience Counts: Using Older Scores................................................................................21 Taking Care of Yourself before the Test ................................................................................21 Staying active..................................................................................................................21 Eating well .......................................................................................................................21 Discovering relaxation...................................................................................................21 Avoiding artificial study aids (drugs) ..........................................................................22 Approaching a Question with Confidence ............................................................................22 Anticipating test questions ...........................................................................................22 Changing your attitude..................................................................................................22 Remembering that this is only a test ...........................................................................23
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The GRE Test For Dummies, 6th Edition Chapter 3: Getting Familiar with the Computerized GRE...............................................25 Bracing Yourself for the Tutorials..........................................................................................25 Knowing the Rules so You Don’t Sink Your Score ................................................................26 What You See Is What You Get: On-Screen Icons .................................................................26 Blacking In the Bubbles: How to Select Your Answers........................................................27
Chapter 4: Starting with the Easy Stuff: Analogies ........................................................29 If Only All Relationships Were This Easy: The Format ........................................................29 Approaching Analogy-Solving Perfection: A Two-Step Program........................................30 They Really Are Out to Get You: Avoiding Traps and Tricks with a Few Good Tips .......31 Turn a verb into an infinitive ........................................................................................31 Determine the part of speech of the question word..................................................31 Look for the salient features of a word........................................................................32 Work backward ...............................................................................................................33 Identify common relationships.....................................................................................33 Use roots, prefixes, and suffixes...................................................................................33 The Terminator: Eliminating Idiotic Answers.......................................................................36 Déjà Vu Review .........................................................................................................................36
Chapter 5: The Dirty Dozen: Analogy Practice Questions.............................................37
Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions ...............................45 Chapter 6: If Opposites Attract, Why Are Antonyms So Repulsive?............................47 Is That All There Is? The Format............................................................................................47 Let’s Get This Over with Fast: The Approach ......................................................................48 What to Do When You Ain’t Got a Clue .................................................................................49 Bad Things Come in Small Packages: Tricks, Traps, and Tips ...........................................49 Ignore the synonym .......................................................................................................49 Use roots, prefixes, and suffixes...................................................................................49 Memorize connotation cards........................................................................................50 Don’t anticipate and misread........................................................................................50 Peroration (A Summing Up)....................................................................................................51
Chapter 7: Unattractive Opposites: Antonym Practice Questions...............................53 Chapter 8: Finishing What You Start: Sentence Completions ......................................59 Recognizing Sentence Completion Questions......................................................................59 Looking at the Sentence and Drawing a Blank .....................................................................60 Read the entire sentence...............................................................................................60 If possible, predict words to fit the blanks .................................................................60 Insert the answer choices .............................................................................................61 Blowing Sentences Away: Dynamite Traps ’n’ Tricks..........................................................62 Remember that connections count .............................................................................62 Use your crystal ball ......................................................................................................62 Guess and go...................................................................................................................63 Getting Back to Your Roots.....................................................................................................64 A Sense of Completion: Review ..............................................................................................66 Approaches .....................................................................................................................66 Tricks ...............................................................................................................................66
Chapter 9: Reality Check: Sentence Completion Practice Questions ........................69
Table of Contents Chapter 10: Readings That Can Affect Your Future: Blood Pressure, Astrology, and the GRE ..........................................................................73 What Do They Look Like? Reading Comprehension Passages and Their Questions ......73 Acing the Three Commonly Tested Reading Comprehension Passages...........................74 Beam me up, Scotty! Biological and physical science passages ..............................74 It’s not a disease: The social sciences passage ..........................................................75 Gimme a break, I’m only human: The humanities passages.....................................76 All or Nothing: Questions to Take Seriously; Questions to Laugh Off...............................77 It’s the attitude, dude: The attitude or tone question ...............................................77 What’s the big idea? Main idea or best title questions..............................................79 Don’t pester me with details: The detail or fact question ........................................80 The power of positive thinking: Negative or exception questions ..........................80 Toga! Toga! Toga! The Roman numeral question........................................................81 Journey into the deep: Text-referenced questions ....................................................81 The swing vote: Extending the author’s reasoning....................................................82 Something Up Your Sleeve: Tips for Making GRE Life a Little Easier ................................83 Be positive or neutral, not negative.............................................................................83 Choose answers containing key words .......................................................................83 Be wishy-washy, not dramatic ......................................................................................83 The Final Paragraph: Review ..................................................................................................84 Approaches .....................................................................................................................84 Tips ..................................................................................................................................85
Chapter 11: Words to Help You Score: GRE Vocabulary................................................87 The Long but Easy Journey: Studying Vocabulary ..............................................................87 The Paramount 300: Memorizing the Most Common Words..............................................88
Chapter 12: Practice What We Preach: Reading Comprehension Practice Questions...............................................................................................................97 Passage I....................................................................................................................................97 Passage II.................................................................................................................................100
Part III: Two Years of Math in a Handful of Pages: The Dreaded Math Review .........................................................103 Chapter 13: More Figures than a Beauty Pageant: Geometry Review......................105 An Angular Look at Geometry ..............................................................................................105 Triangular Tidbits ..................................................................................................................108 Working with similar figures .......................................................................................110 Calculating a triangle’s area and perimeter ..............................................................111 Understanding the Pythagorean theorem.................................................................112 Recognizing Pythagorean triples................................................................................112 Thanks 4 Nothing: Quadrilaterals ........................................................................................114 Quaint quads: Bizarre quadrilaterals.........................................................................115 Leftovers again: Shaded-area problems ....................................................................115 Missing Parrots and Other Polly-Gones: More Polygons ..................................................116 Determining total interior angle measure .................................................................117 Finding one interior angle ...........................................................................................117 Getting the Total Picture: Volume & Total Surface Area ...................................................118 Calculating volume.......................................................................................................118 Figuring out total surface area....................................................................................119 I’m Too Much of a Klutz for Coordinate Geometry............................................................120 Running Around in Circles ....................................................................................................120
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The GRE Test For Dummies, 6th Edition Chapter 14: Gotta Catch Some (Xs, Ys, and) Zs: Algebra and Other Sleeping Aids ...........................................................................................................127 The Powers That Be: Bases and Exponents .......................................................................127 Keepin’ It in Proportion: Ratios............................................................................................130 Things Aren’t What They Seem: Symbolism.......................................................................132 Abracadabra: Algebra............................................................................................................135 Alphabet soup: Solving for x.......................................................................................136 Curses! FOILed again....................................................................................................137 Fact or fiction: Factoring .............................................................................................138 Too Hip to Be Square: Roots and Radicals .........................................................................139 Adding and subtracting ...............................................................................................139 Multiplying and dividing..............................................................................................139 Working inside out .......................................................................................................140 Probably Probability..............................................................................................................140
Chapter 15: Miscellaneous Math You Probably Already Know.................................143 DIRTy Math: Distance, Rate, and Time ................................................................................143 It All Averages Out: Averages ...............................................................................................144 Solving missing term average problems ...................................................................145 Working with weighted averages ...............................................................................147 Percentage Panic....................................................................................................................148 Ignorance is bliss: Converting percentages to decimals or fractions ...................149 Life has its ups and downs: Determining percent increase/decrease ...................149 Ready, Set, Go: Number Sets.................................................................................................151 Prime Time: Prime and Composite Numbers .....................................................................152 I’m All Mixed Up: Mixture Problems ....................................................................................153 Greed Is Great: Interest Problems ........................................................................................154 All Work and No Play: Work Problems ................................................................................155 Reading between the Lines: Absolute Value.......................................................................156 Smooth Operator: Order of Operations ..............................................................................157 Measuring Up: Units of Measurement .................................................................................157 What’s the Point: Decimals ...................................................................................................159 Adding and subtracting decimals ..............................................................................159 Multiplying decimals....................................................................................................160 Dividing decimals .........................................................................................................160 Broken Hearts, Broken Numbers: Fractions .......................................................................160 Adding or subtracting fractions .................................................................................160 Multiplying fractions....................................................................................................161 Dividing fractions .........................................................................................................162 Playing with mixed numbers ......................................................................................162 The Stats Don’t Lie: Statistics...............................................................................................162 Median ...........................................................................................................................162 Mode ..............................................................................................................................163 Range .............................................................................................................................163 A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Graphs..................................................................164 Math Concepts You Absolutely MUST Know......................................................................166 Angles ............................................................................................................................166 Circles ............................................................................................................................166 Common Pythagorean ratios ......................................................................................167 Exponents......................................................................................................................167 FOIL method of algebra ...............................................................................................167 Graphing ........................................................................................................................167 Linear algebraic equations..........................................................................................167 Ratios .............................................................................................................................168 Square roots..................................................................................................................168 Symbolism .....................................................................................................................168
Table of Contents
Part IV: Your Number’s Up: Math Questions ................................169 Chapter 16: The Incomparable Quantitative Comparisons .........................................171 Where Did All the Answers Go? The QC Format ................................................................171 As Easy as π: Approaching QC Questions...........................................................................172 Gotchas and Other Groaners: Tips, Traps, and Tricks......................................................173 Remembering that equal appearances can be deceiving .......................................173 Keeping an eye out for scale.......................................................................................173 Testing your artistic abilities — or not .....................................................................175 Avoiding distraction from a pretty picture ...............................................................176 Canceling out identical quantities .............................................................................177 Weighing the columns..................................................................................................177 Plugging in the Sacred Six ...........................................................................................178 Throwing down a hundred..........................................................................................179 Inserting variety when working with multiple variables.........................................180 Familiarity Breeds Content(ment): A Review .....................................................................181 Approach .......................................................................................................................181 Tips ................................................................................................................................181
Chapter 17: Putting It All Together: QC Practice Questions........................................183 Chapter 18: Real Math at Last: Problem Solving...........................................................189 Strategic Planning: The Attack Strategy..............................................................................189 Three Common-Sense Suggestions for Problem Solving ..................................................190 Eliminate illogical (read: stupid) answer choices ....................................................190 Don’t choose a “close enough” answer .....................................................................190 Give your pencil a workout.........................................................................................191 I’m Sure I Know You from Somewhere: A Quick Review ...................................................191 Approach .......................................................................................................................191 Tricks .............................................................................................................................191
Chapter 19: A Chance to Show Off: Problem Solving Practice Questions...............193
Part V: Getting into Analysis: Analytical Writing ........................197 Chapter 20: Analytical Writing.........................................................................................199 Your Opinion Counts: Present Your Perspective on an Issue ..........................................199 Full of Sound and Fury: Analyze an Argument ...................................................................200 Half a Dozen Is Better than None: Scoring ..........................................................................201 Hunting for the next Hemingway: What evaluators look for ..................................201 Providing pointless information: What drives evaluators crazy............................202 Presenting Your Perspective in a Well-Wrapped Package ................................................203 Paragraph one...............................................................................................................203 Paragraph two ..............................................................................................................203 Paragraphs three and four ..........................................................................................204 Paragraphs five and six ...............................................................................................205 Paragraph seven...........................................................................................................205 Time’s up .......................................................................................................................205 Analyzing an Argument in Six Paragraphs ..........................................................................205 Paragraph one...............................................................................................................206 Paragraphs two, three, and four.................................................................................206 Paragraph five...............................................................................................................206 Paragraph six ................................................................................................................207 Time’s up .......................................................................................................................207
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The GRE Test For Dummies, 6th Edition Chapter 21: Do You Have the Write Stuff? Analytical Writing Practice Questions ..............................................................................................209 Present Your Perspective on an Issue .................................................................................210 Answer explanations....................................................................................................210 Sample answer one: Score 6 (outstanding) or 5 (strong) .......................................210 Reader comments on the 6/5 essay ...........................................................................211 Sample answer two: Score 4 (adequate) or 3 (limited) ...........................................211 Reader comments on the 4/3 essay ...........................................................................212 Sample answer three: Score 2 (seriously flawed) or 1 (fundamentally deficient) .....................................................................................212 Reader comments on the 2/1 essay ...........................................................................213 Analyze an Argument.............................................................................................................213 Answer explanations....................................................................................................213 Sample answer one: Score 6 (outstanding) or 5 (strong) .......................................213 Reader comments on the 6/5 essay ...........................................................................214 Sample answer two: Score 4 (adequate) or 3 (limited) ...........................................214 Reader comments on the 4/3 essay ...........................................................................215 Sample answer three: Score 2 (seriously flawed) or 1 (fundamentally deficient) .....................................................................................215 Reader comments on the 2/1 essay ...........................................................................215
Part VI: It All Comes Down to This: Full-Length Practice GREs .....217 Chapter 22: How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Day, Part I: Practice Exam 1..................219 Answer Sheet ..........................................................................................................................221 Analytical Writing: Present Your Perspective on an Issue................................................223 Analytical Writing: Analyze an Argument ...........................................................................228 Verbal Section.........................................................................................................................233 Math Section ...........................................................................................................................239 Answer Key for Practice Exam 1 ..........................................................................................243
Chapter 23: Practice Exam 1: Answers and Explanations ..........................................245 Verbal Section.........................................................................................................................245 Math Section ...........................................................................................................................250 Analytical Writing Sections...................................................................................................257
Chapter 24: How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Day, Part II: Practice Exam 2 ................259 Answer Sheet ..........................................................................................................................261 Analytical Writing: Present Your Perspective on an Issue................................................263 Analytical Writing: Analyze an Argument ...........................................................................270 Verbal Section.........................................................................................................................277 Math Section ...........................................................................................................................283 Answer Key for Practice Exam 2 ..........................................................................................287
Chapter 25: Practice Exam 2: Answers and Explanations ..........................................289 Verbal Section.........................................................................................................................289 Math Section ...........................................................................................................................294 Analytical Writing Sections...................................................................................................301
Table of Contents
Part VII: The Part of Tens ..........................................................303 Chapter 26: Ten False Rumors about the GRE ................................................................305 Missing the First Few Questions Gives You an Easier Test and a Better Score .............305 The GRE Has a Passing Score ...............................................................................................305 Your Score Won’t Improve if You Keep Retaking the GRE ................................................306 You Can’t Study for the GRE .................................................................................................306 Your GRE Score Will Be about the Same as Your High School SAT Score .......................306 The GRE Tests IQ....................................................................................................................307 You Must Pass Certain Classes to Take the GRE................................................................307 You Can Take the GRE on Your Own Computer at Home..................................................307 You Can Bring Your Own Laptop to the Testing Center....................................................308 Computer Geniuses Have an Unfair Advantage on the GRE.............................................308
Chapter 27: Ten Stupid Ways to Mess Up Your GRE.....................................................309 Cheating ..................................................................................................................................309 Losing Concentration ............................................................................................................309 Not Taking Advantage of the Breaks....................................................................................310 Obsessing about the Previous Sections ..............................................................................310 Panicking over Time ..............................................................................................................310 Rushing through the Confirm Step ......................................................................................310 Scheduling the Test at the Same Time as Your Best Friend .............................................311 Stressing Out over Your Computer Skills (Or Lack Thereof) ...........................................311 Trying to Keep Track of the Question Breakdown ............................................................311 Worrying about the Hard Problems.....................................................................................312
Chapter 28: Ten Relaxation Techniques to Try before and during the GRE..............313 Breathe Deeply .......................................................................................................................313 Rotate Your Head ...................................................................................................................313 Rotate Your Scalp...................................................................................................................314 Cross and Roll Your Eyes ......................................................................................................314 Cup Your Eyes ........................................................................................................................314 Hunch and Roll Your Shoulders ...........................................................................................314 Shake Out Your Hands...........................................................................................................314 Extend and Push Out Your Legs...........................................................................................314 Curtail Negative Thoughts ....................................................................................................315 Visualize before the Test or during a Break........................................................................315
Index .......................................................................................317
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The GRE Test For Dummies, 6th Edition
Introduction
W
elcome to The GRE Test For Dummies, 6th Edition. Don’t take the title personally. Being a dummy is good; it just means you’re normal. Unfortunately, the GRE is anything but normal. As we’ve discovered in more than two decades of fighting the GRE wars, the GRE has no connection to the Real World. When you were given the dire news that you had to take the GRE to get into graduate school, you probably flashed back to the SAT (lovingly known as Sadists Against Teenagers) that you had to take to get into college. Although the two tests share some similarities (both exams are the leading causes of ulcers, migraines, and decisions to become a Bora Bora beachcomber), they’re more dissimilar than similar. The primary dissimilarity has to do with your familiarity with the material. In high school, instructors often “teach to the test.” They know that their students are going to take the SAT, know the kids themselves, and teach them what will be on the test and how to take the exam. In college, you’re on your own. Your professors may not have any idea who you are (“The kid in the I’m only here for the beer T-shirt who sits in the upper row of the lecture hall? In our mind we call him Bud, but we don’t know him at all.”), and they almost certainly aren’t going to take time away from class to discuss the traps and tricks on the GRE. In addition, you’ve spent the last few years of college working on the courses specific to your major: invertebrate biology, lifestyles of the upper Botswana natives, or maybe sociological and psychological implications of domestic dissonance. It has been a long, long time since you’ve taken basic algebra, geometry, and arithmetic (found in the math portions of the GRE) or vocabulary and logic (found in the verbal and analytical portions of the GRE). And what if you’re no longer in college? No doubt about it; you need some help. And a specialist is in the best position to provide the skills you need. Think of this book as a SWAT team that you can call in when the situation gets desperate. Like a SWAT team, this book aims to deal with the crisis efficiently, do the job, save the day, and get you out as quickly as possible. We know that you have a life you want to get back to. The goal of this book is to help you learn what you need and can use on the GRE — period. No extra garbage is thrown in to impress you with esoteric facts; no filler is added to make this book the fattest one on the market. If you need a doorstop, go pick up the New York City telephone directory. If you need a quick ’n’ easy guide to surviving the GRE, you’re in the right place.
About This Book It’s Us versus Them. Who are They? The creators of the GRE, those gnomes in green eyeshades. The next time you’re trying to get away from a soporific dolt (sleep-inducing blockhead) at a party, answer the question, “So, what do you do for a living?” with the response, “I create questions for the GRE.” That conversation-stopper is guaranteed to send any paramour manqué (would-be sweetie) running and screaming into the night. In The GRE Test For Dummies, 6th Edition, we show you how to approach each type of question, recognize the traps that are built into the questions, and master the tricks that help you to avoid those traps. The book is full of Gotchas! we (test-prep tutors since the Dawn of Time) have seen test-takers fall for repeatedly. In this book, you learn to think the GRE way (don’t worry; it’s not permanent) in order to identify the point behind the various styles and
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The GRE Test For Dummies, 6th Edition types of questions and to figure out what each style and type is trying to test. This book also gives you a review of the basics (from math formulas and common roots to prefixes and suffixes useful for improving your vocabulary), along with a laugh or two to make absorbing the material as painless as possible. If you only use this book to prop open a window or serve as a booster seat for a toddler, you won’t get the most out of it. We suggest two alternatives: ⻬ Fine-tune your skills. Turn to specific sections for specific information and help. The organization of this book makes it very easy to find the type of math question you always have trouble with, suggestions for answering Reading Comprehension questions without having finished the passage, and tricks for guessing. If you’re in college classes or a career in which you use this jazz every day (maybe you’re a math major at school or you teach high school English classes) and need just a nudge in one or two areas, you can work through those sections only. ⻬ Start from scratch. Read through the whole book. Actually, we want you to follow this approach. No matter how well you do on a section, you can improve. Believing you should work on your weakest sections only is a mistake. The 50 points you gain in your mediocre section by skimming through the suggestions in this book are just as worthwhile as the 50 points you get by grunting, groaning, and sweating through your most difficult area. If you have the time, do yourself a favor and read the book from cover to cover. Besides, you don’t want to miss any of our jokes, now do you? The GRE Test For Dummies, 6th Edition, is simple and straightforward enough for first-time GRE victims, er, test-takers that they can understand the entire exam and do well right out of the starting gate. But it’s also detailed and sophisticated enough that veterans — folks who’ve taken the exam once or twice before but aren’t resting on their laurels (sounds painful, anyway) — can learn the more complicated information necessary to get those truly excellent scores. Note to nontraditional students: We’re aware of the fact that you may not be a 21-year-old college senior taking this exam to go into graduate school right after college. You may have been out of college so long that your children are 21-year-old seniors! Maybe you’ve just decided to go back to grad school after a long career or after raising a family, and you need help getting back into math and verbal stuff that you had in what seems like another lifetime. We sympathize with you; dealing with nonagons, quadratic equations, and analogies again is tough. Don’t despair; you can get outside help, especially in math, which is one of the first bits of knowledge to fade when people get away from school. Call a community college or even a high school (the math on this exam doesn’t exceed what’s taught in upper-division high school math classes, depressing as that may seem to you as you’re sweating through it). Ask for help finding a tutor or for suggestions on finding a quick review course in your area. You can also call your local library for assistance.
Pardon Me for Having a Life: Who Has Time for This? You have school or work, sports or other hobbies, family responsibilities and, oh yes, something that vaguely resembles a social life. How on Earth are you going to fit in studying for the GRE? The following sections break it down for you in a nice, neat little package.
Introduction
Time required to go through the GRE lectures Buying this book was brilliant. (Okay, so your roommate, your spouse, or some significant other bought it and tossed it at you with the snide comment, “Hey, you can sure use all the help you can get.” Whatever.) How much time should you take to go through this book? We suggest 25 hours. Each subject (Antonyms, Analogies, Sentence Completions, Reading Comprehension, Quantitative Comparisons, Problem Solving, and Analytical Writing) includes a chapter on the format, approach, and traps and tricks for that particular type of question. Following each lecture, we include a quiz chapter featuring a sampling of questions that tests what you learned in that lecture. The detailed answer explanations point out the traps you may have fallen for and the tips you should’ve used to avoid the traps. You discover which questions to skip (as either too hard or too time-consuming) and which to double-check. You should spend about two hours per lecture, including the quiz — you’re looking at 14 hours total here. The book also includes a three-part math review; each section (geometry, algebra, and arithmetic) should take roughly one hour, for a total of three hours.
Time required to go through the practice GREs At the end of the book are two full-length GREs. Each exam takes two and a quarter hours to complete and about another hour to review. Our thinking that you should take an hour to review the exam doesn’t reflect a lack of confidence in your erudition and sagacity (knowledge and wisdom). We’re not saying that you’re so inept and bungling (unskilled) that you’re going to miss a plethora (abundance) of questions. Our suggestion is that you review all the answer explanations — even those for the questions you answer correctly. You’ll learn some good stuff from the explanations; you’ll also review formulas, find shortcuts, and see more traps and tricks. We’ll exaggerate and say that the whole test and review should take you three and a half hours. The following table gives you what we think is a reasonable timetable.
Activity
Time
7 lectures at 2 hours per lecture
14 hours
2 exams at 3 ⁄2 hours per exam (including review)
7 hours
3 math review chapters at 1 hour per chapter
3 hours
2 Analytical Writing essays at 45 minutes and 30 minutes
1 hour 15 minutes
Time spent laughing hysterically at the authors’ jokes
5 minutes
Time spent composing letter complaining about the authors’ crummy jokes
5 minutes
TOTAL
25 hours, 25 minutes
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No one expects you to read this book for 25 hours straight. Each unit is self-contained. The answer explanations may remind you of things from other units because repetition aids learning and memorizing, but you can read through each unit separately. Are you ready? Stupid question. Are you resigned? Have you accepted your fate that you’re going to take the GRE no matter what and that you may as well have fun studying for it? Take a deep breath, turn the page, and go for it. Here’s hoping that, for you, GRE comes to stand for Genius Rocks Exam!
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The GRE Test For Dummies, 6th Edition
How This Book Is Organized This book is divided into seven parts. Each one focuses on a separate aspect of preparing for the GRE, but together they lay the foundation for improving your test scores.
Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective In this part, you get some perspective on the GRE as a whole. We introduce you to what’s on the exam, what you need to know to do your best on the test, and what the scores look like.
Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions The Verbal portion of the GRE tests your vocabulary (with Antonyms, Analogies, and Sentence Completion questions) and reading skills (with Reading Comprehension passages and questions). In Part II, we put you through the paces so that these questions (hopefully) become second nature to you.
Part III: Two Years of Math in a Handful of Pages: The Dreaded Math Review We know that all those geometry formulas, algebra rules, and arithmetic concepts you learned once upon a time still lurk back in the dim, dark recesses of your mind. The job of the three math-review chapters in this part is to force all that info front and center, where you can make good use of it.
Part IV: Your Number’s Up: Math Questions The bits of wisdom imparted to you in Part IV allow you to do your best on the two types of math questions found on the GRE — Quantitative Comparisons and Problem Solving.
Part V: Getting into Analysis: Analytical Writing The newest portion of the GRE, Analytical Writing, asks you to craft two essays on topics presented to you. This part gives you tips on how to overcome writer’s block and get started, as well as what the readers reward you for writing . . . and what causes them to scream in anguish.
Part VI: It All Comes Down to This: Full-Length Practice GREs What good is all this brilliance if you can’t show it off? Part VI lets you take two full-length exams to make sure you can practice what we’ve preached.
Introduction
Part VII: The Part of Tens At last, the good stuff! This part has fun — but useful — information such as ten stupid things you can do to mess up your GRE and ten relaxation techniques you can try before and during the GRE.
Icons and Conventions Used in This Book To help you get through this book more quickly, we include some icons that flag the particularly important stuff. The icons look like this: This icon marks sample problems that appear in the lectures.
Be wary of the important stuff that this icon points out to you. If you skip these sections, we accept no responsibility for what may happen to you.
As you stumble through your GRE preparation, these little commandments are tidbits you should never forget.
This icon directs you to tips that make taking the GRE go much more smoothly. These tips alone are worth the price of this book. Trust us.
The test-makers throw in some nasty traps that may get you if you don’t think about the questions carefully. Memorize the tricks marked by this icon, and you’ll be amazed at how easily you can outsmart the GRE. In addition to the icons, keep your eyes peeled for words that look like this. This special typeface indicates a GRE word that you may not know and is followed directly by its meaning. (Here’s a handy tip: Fix these words successfully in your memory by trying to use them in everyday life. Call your roommate or your children indolent, lethargic, and listless when they don’t jump up to do the dishes right after dinner, or promise your professor or boss you’ll be diligent, meticulous, and painstaking in your next assignment.) You should also know that Web addresses appear in their own font (www.wiley.com) so you can easily pick them out amidst our copious amounts of wit and knowledge.
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The GRE Test For Dummies, 6th Edition
Part I
An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective
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In this part . . .
e know, we know. The only aerial view you’d like to have of the GRE is the one you see from 10,000 feet up as a jet takes you far, far away from this exam. Use the info in this book correctly and you can ace the GRE, go to a top grad school, get a great job, and then buy your own private jet and buzz the office of that college guidance counselor who told you your best chance at a good life would be to marry rich. Hey, it’s something to aim for (the goal, not the college counselor). You’re probably eager to get right into studying for the GRE (or maybe not), but take a few minutes to go through this introductory material. Finding out everything you can about your enemy before going into battle is always good strategy.
Chapter 1
Know Your Enemy: What the GRE Looks Like In This Chapter 䊳 Understanding the format of the GRE 䊳 Scoring the exam 䊳 Preparing to encounter an unscored section 䊳 Remembering to stretch during breaks
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nlike traditional, standardized paper-and-pencil tests, which feature a roomful of testtakers sweating and fretting together in a lecture hall, the GRE is now totally computer based in the United States. Paper-and-pencil tests are only available in countries with limited access to computers. No, you don’t get to take the test on your home computer with a dictionary in one hand and a tropical drink with a paper umbrella in the other (sorry if we got your hopes up only to dash them cruelly). The GRE is offered at designated technology centers throughout the world on most days of the year, usually during standard business hours. This schedule means that if you’re not a morning person, you don’t have to worry about getting up at the crack of dawn and trudging across town to attempt to make your lethargic brain cells function at 8 a.m. You can take the test at any hour you personally consider civilized, such as later in the afternoon, or even in the evening. For info on signing up for the GRE, see the current GRE Information and Registration Bulletin. (You can pick up this bulletin at a college admissions office, register online for it at www.ets.org, or register via phone by calling 800-473-2255.) To see the GRE test centers nearest you, visit www.ets.org and plug in your state.
For each section of the GRE, the difficulty level of the questions is tailored to your abilities. You thus have a bespoke (custom-tailored) exam. Each section begins with a question of average difficulty (500 level). If you answer this question correctly, the computer elevates you to the 580-ish level and gives you a question that’s more difficult than the first. If you answer this second question correctly, the computer places you at about 640, and you receive a question commensurate with that ability level. As long as you keep answering questions correctly, your score goes up, and you get more difficult questions. Later questions don’t cause as dramatic a jump in your score as the first few questions. And when you miss a question, your score goes down, and you get an easier question. Eventually, you reach a level at which you’re answering about half the questions correctly. At that point, the computer only adjusts your score by about ten points at a time. (Test-takers scoring at or near 800 may never get to the point at which they’re missing half the questions; in contrast, those poor souls scoring at or near 200 may never achieve a level at which half of their answers are correct.)
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective
Looking at the Breakdown (To Avoid Having One!) The GRE consists of three scored sections: one 30-minute Verbal subtest, one 45-minute Math (Quantitative) subtest, one 45-minute Analytical Writing essay, and one 30-minute Analytical Writing essay. Typically, you get 30 verbal questions, 28 math questions, and 2 essay topics. In the Verbal and Math sections, the number of each question type (such as Analogies and Quantitative Comparisons) is proportional to what appeared on the old paper-and-pencil version of the test. Table 1-1 provides a quick overview of what the GRE is all about, how many questions it torments and delights you with, and how much time you have to complete each section. The various sections may be arranged in any order. (For the scoop on the unscored section of the test, flip to “Understanding When Your Answers Don’t Count: The Possible Unscored Section” later in this chapter.) Note that the sections marked with asterisks in Table 1-1 aren’t always given, but you should be prepared for the worst just in case.
Table 1-1
GRE Breakdown by Section
Section
Number of Questions
Time Allotted
Verbal
30
30 minutes
Math
28
45 minutes
Analytical Writing
2
75 minutes
*Unidentified unscored
28 to 35
30 to 60 minutes
*Identified unscored
Test-maker’s surprise
On the GRE, the first five questions of the Verbal section and the first five questions of the Math section are the most important. You get a much higher score if you answer the first five questions correctly and miss all the rest than if you miss the first five questions and answer all the others correctly. Be sure to use your time wisely. Because you can’t go back and change your answers, you must be as accurate as possible on each section’s first five questions to ensure you’ll receive harder questions (that are worth more points!) for the rest of the exam. That sounds bizarre, we know. But you really do want harder questions because the level of difficulty you reach determines your score. If you slip up and miss one early question, you can still reel off a series of correct answers, show that your mistake was a fluke, and get to the harder questions. However, if you miss a handful of early questions, the computer determines that these questions are too difficult for you and gives you easy questions. You may answer all these easy questions correctly, but your test will be over by the time the computer raises the difficulty level to the high-score range. So exactly what types of questions and how many of each type can you expect to run into on the GRE? Check out Table 1-2 for the answers.
Chapter 1: Know Your Enemy: What the GRE Looks Like Table 1-2
GRE Breakdown by Question Style (Not Including the Possible Unscored Section)
Type of Question
Number of Questions
Antonyms
8–10
Analogies
6–8
Sentence Completions
5–7
Reading Comprehension
6–10
Quantitative Comparisons
14
Problem Solving/Data Interpretation
4
Discreet Quantitative (multiple choice)
10
Perspective on an Issue
1 topic
Analysis of an Argument
1 topic
These different question types are mixed throughout the section in which they belong. For example, you may encounter two Analogies, two Sentence Completions, and two Antonyms to start off your Verbal section. Next, you may see some Reading Comprehension questions, then more Analogies, and so on. The Math section could feature three Quantitative Comparisons, two Problem Solving questions, two Data Interpretation questions, four more Quantitative Comparisons, and so on.
Scoring 101 You don’t own the Ferrari yet. (If you do, and you’re a single, eligible male, please write to us care of the publisher.) You don’t bring in the six-digit paycheck yet. (If you do, please see the previous parenthetical comment.) Being 21 (or 25 or 30) is rough, huh? After all, you need something to boast about. How about your GRE scores? GRE scores are to would-be graduate students what salaries are to people in the Real World. Students brag about them, exaggerate them, and try to impress others with them. When you finish the test, you have the option of either seeing your Verbal and Math scores or canceling them. If you cancel your scores, you won’t get a chance to see how you did. On the other hand, you can’t decide to cancel your scores after you see them, so think carefully about how well you feel you’ve done. Finding out your scores at the end of the testing session is part of what people like about the computerized testing process. Instead of waiting two to four weeks to receive your scores in the mail, you can get the good news immediately! Schools still have to wait a little while though, generally about 15 days.
Figuring out your scores With the GRE, you receive three separate scores: Verbal, Math, and Analytical Writing. Although you can obtain your unofficial Verbal and Math scores immediately after taking the test (as explained in the preceding section), you must wait 10 to 15 days to get your Analytical Writing score in the mail. Here’s the scoring range for each of the three sections:
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective ⻬ Verbal: The Verbal score (also called verbal ability) ranges from 200 to 800 in 10-point increments. Yes, you read that right. You automatically get 200 points for showing up at the testing facility and staring at the computer. ⻬ Math: The Math score also ranges from 200 to 800 in 10-point increments. ⻬ Analytical Writing: The Analytical Writing score ranges from 0 to 6. Two graders each assign you up to 6 points; then anonymous GRE employees average those two scores together. If the two graders don’t agree, another grader steps in to settle the discrepancy.
Knowing how your scores measure up On a recent GRE, the median scores on the Verbal and Math sections (that is, half the people taking the exam were above these scores, half were below these scores) were 480 and 570, respectively. Averages for the Analytical Writing section change according to which GRE you take. The average of students taking the exam in April may be slightly different from the average of students taking the exam in June. Your individual goals should depend on which grad schools you’re applying to and what GPA (grade-point average) you have. There’s no such thing as a passing or failing score — only what you need to get accepted to the program that you have your heart set on.
Playing the guessing game You may have no choice but to guess because the computer won’t budge until you choose an answer. Unlike paper-and-pencil tests, on which you can move around and choose questions that are more to your liking, the computer requires you to mark an answer before you go on to the next question. So if you’re completely stuck, don’t waste time agonizing. Guess quickly and move on. Which oval should you fill in? Any. Don’t listen to the obscenely abusive rumors that the correct answers on the exam more often correspond to the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth ovals. Instead, remember that on the computer screen, the ovals aren’t marked A, B, C, D, and E; they’re left blank. Every answer has the same probability. Which oval you choose has no bearing. Be sure to answer all the questions. You’re penalized more for unanswered questions than for wrong answers, so make sure that you get to the end, even if that means guessing wildly in the last minute or so.
Discovering the number of correct answers you need for specific scores Following are rough estimates of how many questions you must answer correctly to achieve certain scores on each section. These numbers change from exam to exam. Also, keep in mind that your individual scores are based upon the difficulty level of the questions, your performance on the questions, and the number of questions that you answer.
Chapter 1: Know Your Enemy: What the GRE Looks Like Verbal scores To get a 400, you need to correctly answer 14 out of 30 questions (about 47 percent). To get a 500, you need to correctly answer 18 out of 30 questions (about 60 percent). To get a 600, you need to correctly answer 22 out of 30 questions (about 73 percent). To get a 700, you need to correctly answer 25 out of 30 questions (about 84 percent).
Math scores To get a 400, you need to correctly answer 11 out of 28 questions (about 39 percent). To get a 500, you need to correctly answer 15 out of 28 questions (about 54 percent). To get a 600, you need to correctly answer 19 out of 28 questions (about 68 percent). To get a 700, you need to correctly answer 23 out of 28 questions (about 82 percent).
Analytical Writing scores There’s no particular “number correct” in this section because you have two essays to write. See Chapter 20 for more info on how the essays are scored.
Understanding When Your Answers Don’t Count: The Possible Unscored Section The GRE test you take may in fact feature an additional Verbal or Math section, and you won’t necessarily know which section is the unscored one. So what’s the story behind this “unscored” section anyway? (Some people — okay, okay, the GRE powers-that-be — refer to it as an experimental or equating section.) Why does the GRE often feature a section that doesn’t count? One of the two possible unscored sections isn’t identified as such because the test-makers want to use you as a guinea pig, trying out new questions and double-checking that all questions are fair. You’re an unwilling — and unwitting — participant. You’re obviously unwilling (who’d actually want to prolong this agony?). You’re unwitting, because you don’t know which section is unscored. The test-makers wouldn’t exactly find out much about their new questions if you could sit back and refuse to do your best, knowing that your unwillingness wouldn’t hurt your score, now would they? The unscored section can be Verbal or Math. Either way, you’ll have no idea which one isn’t counted. Well, you may have some idea: If your test has two Verbal sections, you can deduce that one of them is unscored — but which one? Don’t try to outsmart the test-makers. The GRE powers-that-be employ rooms full of men and women whose only task in life is to create these mind-warping questions. You, as a normal person, don’t stand a chance of outsmarting them, so why even try? Just do your best on every section. If you want to give your brain a break, you may be able to do so on an identified unscored section. The GRE sometimes tells you about an unscored section, which you don’t need to take, at the end of the test. If you feel like playing with the computer and helping out the Educational Testing Service (the organization that creates and administers the GRE), you can go ahead and answer the questions, but you aren’t obligated to do so.
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective
I wish it were all Greek to me: A welcome to international students Students from all over the world take the GRE in order to attend American graduate schools. There are GRE testprep courses for students from Brazil, Taiwan, the Ivory Coast, Egypt, Japan — all over the globe. Many courses are enriched by the contributions of students from Korea, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, China, and Mexico. To all of you readers from other nations, welcome!
dramatically add to your vocabulary. You, more than American students, need to keep and learn the vocabulary lists suggested throughout this book.
As international students, you have strengths and weaknesses that are different from those of American students; therefore, the focus of your study should be different as well. Here are our suggestions to help you get the most out of this book and do your best on the actual GRE:
⻬ Forget about the Reading Comprehension section. The reading passages in the GRE are long, hard, and booooring. They’re difficult enough to understand for people who grew up speaking and reading English and are totally demoralizing for people who didn’t. Our suggestion is that you not take Reading Comprehension too seriously. Take your time on the first passage, reading it slowly and carefully. Then scroll through the passage thoroughly to answer the questions. Making quick guesses when you get to the other passages is a good idea.
⻬ Concentrate on the questions that test vocabulary — Antonyms and Analogies. You probably have an advantage over American students on these questions, believe it or not — especially if your native tongue is a Romance language, such as Spanish or French. Romance languages are Latin-based and commonly use words that are uncommon in English. Take, for example, bibliophile. A Spanish speaker knows biblio means book (bibliotéca means library) and can figure out this “hard” word pretty easily. (A bibliophile is a book-lover.)
⻬ Concentrate on the math, especially geometry. Although you do get separate Verbal and Math scores, some colleges concentrate on your overall, or combined, score. Doing extremely well on math can compensate for weaker verbal skills. We suggest that you pay particular attention to the geometry problems. Rarely are they word problems — questions that require a lot of reading. Geometry problems usually feature figures that you can easily understand and use to answer the questions — regardless of whether you’re good at English.
One more thing: Because you’ve studied English, you’re used to memorizing vocabulary (unlike American students who haven’t taken vocabulary tests since junior high school). Although you probably can’t dramatically change your basic reading comprehension level in a few hours, you can
⻬ Go, Go, Go! We can’t say it enough: The GRE penalizes you more for unanswered questions than for wrong answers. Be sure to fill in an answer for every question, even if you have to guess wildly. You absolutely must finish the exam.
Add it all up, and you realize that the part of the test that determines your future takes two and a half hours. (That’s right. Two hours and 30 minutes of this test may be roughly as important as four years of college.) Keep in mind, though, that you’ll probably be at the testing center for approximately four and a half hours. You get some breaks (highlighted in the next section), and you walk through some procedures (such as getting comfortable with the computer via a tutorial and receiving scratch paper). In other words, kiss an entire morning or afternoon goodbye.
Gimme a Break! The GRE Intermissions You have the option of taking a ten-minute break between the second and third sections of the GRE. Depending on whether your bladder is the size of Rhode Island or Texas, you may
Chapter 1: Know Your Enemy: What the GRE Looks Like or may not spend most of your break in the bathroom. Do yourself a favor: Don’t drink or eat too much during the break. Nothing’s worse than sitting there crossing and uncrossing your legs during the test as your eyeballs slowly turn yellow. Between other sections of the test, you get a one-minute break — just enough time to stand up and stretch a bit. You don’t have time to leave your seat and come back before the test resumes. If you absolutely, positively have to go to the restroom and leave the computer during the test, the clock keeps ticking. You may want to grab some munchies to eat and water to drink at the big break, but make sure that the snacks are light and nutritious. Sugar makes you high for a few minutes and then brings you way down. You don’t need to crash right in the middle of a quadratic equation. Take a handful of peanuts, some trail mix, or anything else light that isn’t going to send all the blood from your brain down to your stomach for digestion. Life’s hard enough without trying to calculate the interior angles of a nonagon by using your stomach rather than your brain.
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective
Chapter 2
Knowledge Is Power: Getting the Advantage In This Chapter 䊳 Pacing yourself through the test 䊳 Doing the Backpack Boogie: What to take with you to the test 䊳 Figuring out whether you should repeat the exam 䊳 Tackling the GRE with confidence
Q
uestion: What do standardized tests really test?
Answer: They test how well you take standardized tests! The GRE isn’t an IQ test. Nor is it a measure of your worth as a human being or a predictor of whether you’ll be so successful that you’ll make Bill Gates look like a pauper. The GRE tests how well you take a test because test-taking skills determine how well you’ll do in grad school. (A logical premise when you think about it, isn’t it?) In this chapter, we provide you with some of the general strategies that can help you on the exam as a whole. Wonder whether Bill Gates ever knew these strategies?
Beating the Clock: Tips on Timing The computer provides you with a stopwatch — an on-screen clock — to time each section. You have the option of removing the clock from the screen. If that ticker makes you nervous, by all means, get it out of sight (the computer tutorial at the beginning of the session tells you how to do so). Professionally, we definitely recommend that you hide the clock when you begin each section. You should do whatever it takes to get the first five questions right (we cover the importance of those first five questions in Chapter 1). Bring the clock back when you finish the first five questions, or at least check the clock every 15 minutes or so. Because the early questions count more than later ones, if you’ve answered fewer than half the questions when half of your time has expired, you’re still doing okay. Note: The clock comes on and stays on during the last five minutes; you can’t banish it from that point on. Its nagging presence serves as a reminder that you may have to sprint to the finish soon.
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective Answer ALL the questions, even if you have to make wild guesses. Your score isn’t penalized for wrong answers; in fact, blank answers (as in not finishing the entire test) hurt your score more than wrong answers.
Scratching like a Crazed Chicken You aren’t allowed to bring in a grease pencil and do scratch work on the computer screen! (Don’t laugh: We’ve had more than one student ask us about doing so!) The test proctor gives you blank scratch paper (you can’t bring in your own) before the test begins. Sure, you can use this paper for such traditional scratch work as mathematical calculations. But you can also use it in another key way. Use the general instruction time (a few minutes during which you go through some computer tutorials before the exam officially starts) to write down any key strategies and formulas you want to help you get through the exam. You aren’t allowed to bring any memory aids into the testing center, but you can create your own just before you start tackling the questions.
Packing Your Bags on Test Day Take your brain down from the shelf, dust it off, and take it to the exam with you. In addition, take along a few more items: ⻬ Authorization voucher from ETS: You need to bring proof that you’ve signed up for the test. This evidence can take the form of an authorization voucher, which is proof directly from ETS that you’ve registered for the test. It contains your confirmation number, reporting time, and the test center’s address. You can request that ETS mail, fax, or e-mail a voucher to you when you register for the test. ⻬ Map or directions: Be sure that you know in advance how to get to the testing center. Drive there a few days prior to your test and check out how long the drive takes you, where to park, and so on. One of our students had to take the test at a center in the middle of a downtown area. On the day of the test, she couldn’t find any parking and became totally stressed out before she even got to the testing center. The last thing you need the day of the test is something more to worry about. ⻬ Photo ID: You must have identification with three key elements: • A recognizable photo (one that shows you as the haggard, sleep-deprived person you are after studying for this test, not as the perky, cheerful person you vaguely remember having been a month or so ago) • The name you registered under (if your driver’s license lists you as Steven Boyd Brown, don’t sign up under your nickname of “Boatman” or “Bubbles” or whatever your friends call you) • Your signature Usually, a driver’s license, passport, employee ID, or military ID is acceptable. A student ID alone often isn’t enough, although it’s acceptable as a second form of ID in case you encounter some confusion with the first form. Note that a Social Security card or a credit card isn’t acceptable identification. ⻬ Clothes: You signed up for the special Nude GRE, you say? Well, everyone else should remember to take a few extra layers. Testing centers may be boiling hot or freezing cold. Sitting there for hours either shivering with hands so cold they can’t hit the computer keys or sweating all over your keyboard from the heat is the pits. Dress in layers and be prepared for anything.
Chapter 2: Knowledge Is Power: Getting the Advantage
You Can’t Take It with You Besides your dreams, hopes, goals, and aspirations, leave these other items at the door of the GRE testing center: ⻬ Books and notes: Forget about last-minute studying. You aren’t allowed to take books or notes into the testing center. If you don’t know the material by that time, you never will. (One student asked us whether he could take in a dictionary. You gotta give the guy credit for hope, but somehow we think he missed the point of the verbal questions.) ⻬ Scratch paper: You aren’t allowed to bring in your own scratch paper (with handy notes prepared ahead of time). The proctor gives you scratch paper when you arrive at the testing center. If you run low during the test, request some more from the proctor during the one-minute breaks between sections. Although you have plenty of room to do calculations and scribbling, we understand that ETS owns the copyright to all last wills and testaments written during the exam. ⻬ Calculator: You aren’t allowed to use a calculator during the exam. Don’t think that because your watch has a calculator, you can bend this rule — absolutely no mechanical or digital calculating devices are allowed. ⻬ Friends as cheerleaders: Leave your friends at home. The ETS frowns on visitors. ⻬ Test aids: You may not bring in a radio, cassette, or CD player with headphones; a cellphone; or a personal computer (either a laptop or a hand-held device). In other words, leave the electronics at home. The most you can bring is that good old-fashioned #2 pencil.
Isn’t that special? Unique circumstances Dare to be different. If you have a special circumstance, the GRE powers-that-be are usually willing to accommodate you. For example, if you have a learning disability (no, that doesn’t include being bored and frustrated), you may be able to get additional testing time. Following is a brief list of special circumstances and what to do about them. ⻬ Learning disabilities: These circumstances can range from Attention Deficit Disorder to dyslexia and all sorts of other conditions. To find out whether you qualify for a disabilities waiver of any sort, contact the ETS Disability Services, Educational Testing Service, P.O. Box 6054, Princeton, NJ 08541-6054; phone 866-387-8602 (toll free) or 609-771-7780 United States, U.S. territories, and Canada (Monday–Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time), TTY 609-771-7714, fax 609-771-7165; Web site www.ets.org, e-mail
[email protected]. ⻬ Physical disabilities: Pay attention: We’re about to say something nice about ETS here, a once-in-agoogolplex occurrence for us. ETS tries very hard to accommodate everyone. Those folks who need special arrangements can get Braille or large-print exams, have test readers or recorders, work with interpreters, and so on. You can get the scoop about what the ETS considers to be disabilities and how the disabilities can change the way you take the GRE
in the Supplement for Test Takers with Disabilities. This brochure contains information, registration procedures, and other useful forms for individuals with disabilities. Use the supplement in conjunction with the information and registration forms in the appropriate program bulletin. To get this supplement and the program bulletin, send a request to ETS Disability Services, P.O. Box 6054, Princeton, NJ 08541-6054. Or better yet, log onto www.ets.org, click the GRE link, and then click the Test Takers with Disabilities link. Voilà! All the info you need to know. We thank you, ETS! ⻬ Financial difficulties: Until you ace the GRE, get into a top-notch graduate school, and come out with a smokin’ brain ready to make your first million before your 30th (40th? 50th?) birthday, you may have a rough time paying the GRE fees. Fee waivers are available. Note that this waiver applies only to the actual GRE fee, not to miscellaneous fees such as the test-disclosure service, hand-grading service, and so on. Your college counselor can help you obtain and fill out the appropriate request forms. (If you’re not currently in college, a counselor or financial aid specialist at the closest college or university may still be glad to help you. Just call for an appointment.) The GRE is inflicted upon rich and poor alike.
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Déjà Vu: Repeating the Test Should you repeat the test? Before you make that decision, ask yourself the following questions: ⻬ Am I repeating the test to get a certain minimum qualifying score or just to satisfy my ego? If you have your heart set on a particular graduate school that requires a minimum GRE score, you may want to take the test again and again and again until you get that score. If you’re taking the test only because your ego was demolished when you didn’t score as well as your friends, you should probably think twice before putting yourself through all that trauma again. ⻬ Am I willing to study twice as hard, or am I already burned out? If you put your heart and soul into studying for the exam the first time, you may be too pooped (or enervated, as we didactic dames like to say) to pop for the second exam. After all, scores don’t magically go up on their own; you have to put in a lot of effort. ⻬ What types of mistakes did I make on the first test? If you made mistakes because of a lack of familiarity with either the test format (you didn’t understand what to do when faced with a Quantitative Comparison question) or substance (you didn’t know the vocabulary words or were baffled by the geometry problems), you’re a good candidate for repeating the test. If you know what you did wrong, you can fix it and improve your score. However, if your mistakes were due to carelessness or a lack of concentration, you’re very likely to make those same types of mistakes again. If you truly, honestly, sincerely, and without dissembling (lying) feel that you can sit in the test room and stay focused this time and not make the same stupid mistakes, go for it. But chances are, if you’re the type of test-taker who either always makes a lot of careless mistakes or rarely makes them, you’re not going to change your whole test-taking style overnight. ⻬ Were there extenuating circumstances beyond my control? Maybe your nerves were acting up on the first exam, you were feeling ill, or you didn’t get enough sleep the night before. In that case, by all means repeat the exam. You’re bound to feel better the next time. ⻬ Did I not finish? If you didn’t reach a lot of questions, take the test again. (You may take the test only once during each calendar month, but a smart test-taker can schedule her testing so that she takes the exam on, say, October 31 and then again on November 1.) You can only take it a total of five times per GRE calendar year, which runs from July 1 to June 30. This time, fill in something for every question. Remember: You lose more points for not reaching a question than you do for answering the question incorrectly. Can repeating the exam hurt you? Not really. Most schools look only at your highest score. Find out from the individual schools you’re interested in whether that’s their policy; it isn’t the case for every school. If you’re on the borderline, or if several students are vying for one spot, sometimes having taken the exam repeatedly can hurt you (especially if your most recent score took a nosedive). On the other hand, an admissions counselor who sees several exams with ascending scores may be impressed that you stuck to it and kept trying, even if your score went up just a little bit. In general, if you’re willing to take the time to study and take the repeat seriously, go for it.
Chapter 2: Knowledge Is Power: Getting the Advantage GRE score reporting is cumulative. That is, all the scores you obtain for five years are sent to the schools you designate. You can’t, we repeat, you can’t send scores from only one exam date. For example, if you do great in October, take the exam again in April, and blow it big time, you can’t tell ETS to ignore the April debacle (a sudden collapse, a rout) and send just the October scores. All scores are part of your permanent record.
Experience Counts: Using Older Scores What if you took the GRE five to ten years ago when you thought you were going to go to grad school, and then elected to take a job or start a family instead? Well, if it was five years ago or less, you’re in luck. The GRE folks make the scores reportable for up to five years. That means that if you were pleased with your five-year-old score, you can send it right along to the university and say adios to us right here and now. However, if you took the test more than five years ago, you have to take it again. Don’t worry though, we’ll stick around until the end and see you through the studying process.
Taking Care of Yourself before the Test Just like the long-distance swimmer, you’re in training for a long period of time. Also like the swimmer, who doesn’t just swim in order to prepare for the race, you need to take care of your body by practicing what we recommend in the following sections.
Staying active You can’t just be a bookworm for the year before the exam. You need to use other body parts, too. Exercise helps all parts of the body, including the brain. More exercise, more oxygen to the brain. More oxygen to the brain, clearer thinking. So get moving!
Eating well Just like exercising, the right food contributes to sustained attention and clear thought. You want to avoid sugar highs that eventually result in a crash. Forget those energy drinks that combine huge amounts of caffeine and sugar to get you to a state of heightened paranoia. The ads may tell you that you focus better when you drink those, but you’ll only be reading and writing at a superhuman speed, and your recall will be nada after you come down. Your mom was right: Eat your veggies, fruits, and well-balanced meals. Your brain will be nourished and in turn will thank you with a better score.
Discovering relaxation We’ve seen students who are so overextended and overachieving that they don’t have any time for pleasant relaxation. They stress out, take anti-anxiety pills, have trouble sleeping and concentrating, get panic attacks, and generally exhaust themselves and get sick. Stop for a minute, get in a comfy position, and read this next sentence carefully and slowly.
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Relaxation isn’t a luxury — it’s a requirement for a well-balanced life. You’re a multifaceted human. You aren’t a work-and-study robot. Relaxation comes in many different forms for all kinds of people. Some folks are relaxed when they’re with friends; some read books for enjoyment and play music they like; and some do yoga, meditate, or paint. The only requirement when choosing what relaxation tool to use is making sure your brain isn’t running 100 miles an hour. The whole purpose of relaxation is to give your brain a rest. Your poor brain needs that to function properly when called to duty. So find a relaxing activity you enjoy, thank your brain by telling it to take some time off, and whether you choose to “oooomm” or paint tulips, make it peaceful.
Avoiding artificial study aids (drugs) We’re gonna come clean right here: We’ve pulled all-nighters with the assistance of either a keg of coffee or some over-the-counter caffeine pills, and it wasn’t pleasant. The only thing that uppers, stimulants, and amphetamines do is make you feel like you can clean every kitchen in your neighborhood. And you probably can, except these drugs backfire when it comes to studying. Although they aid you in staying awake for longer periods of time, stimulants make it hard to retain and recall information. They leave you jittery, anxious, agitated, and restless. In some situations, taking stimulants is necessary, like if you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and require them in order to concentrate. But for everyone else, these drugs do just the opposite. They make you think you’re concentrating and studying really hard, but the reality is that you won’t remember too much of what you studied. Just say no!
Approaching a Question with Confidence You’ve put the time into studying and preparing for this test. You know more than you think you do. Even if you fail to remember every detail of every concept, you know at least something about it. If you come to the test feeling completely insecure and doubting yourself, take a moment to remember that we told you that you know more than you think. If you find a question that makes your heart stop with dread, turn that immediately around and say, “I can do this, I will do this, and I feel good about this question.” Following are a few confidencebuilding strategies for you to use.
Anticipating test questions The GRE focuses on core concepts and material. There are no surprises. After you’ve successfully studied this book, you’ll be ready to anticipate the types of questions the GRE powers-that-be will throw at you.
Changing your attitude Tell yourself repeatedly that you’ve studied very hard and that you’re beyond ready for this test. If you need help developing a more confident attitude and staying positive and centered, check out the relaxation techniques presented in Chapter 28. Either way, going into the GRE feeling inadequate isn’t an option for you. YOU have done the work. YOU know this material. You ROCK!
Chapter 2: Knowledge Is Power: Getting the Advantage
Remembering that this is only a test The GRE isn’t an all-or-nothing situation. The success of the rest of your life most definitely isn’t tied up in this test. Realizing that you’re taking just another test (you’ve taken hundreds in your life, right?) and understanding that this test isn’t a measure of your worth as a person provide you with a level of confidence that’s unmatchable. This is only a test. You don’t know these GRE folks. They aren’t going to snicker as you walk by and mutter, “There goes the one that didn’t know what a variable was.” You’ve come this far, you’ve studied, you’ve already triumphed. Approach every question with confidence.
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Chapter 3
Getting Familiar with the Computerized GRE In This Chapter 䊳 Sitting through some basic computer tutorials 䊳 Knowing a few general rules about the computerized GRE 䊳 Reviewing the six on-screen icons 䊳 Selecting your final answers on the computer
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he GRE test is now completely computerized, which is fortunate if you’ve been living in the computer age for quite some time. But even if you’re a computer whiz, we highly recommend that you review this chapter. After all, every computer is different, and because you’re spending so much time studying for this test, you don’t want to risk a silly computer error that messes up your entire score — like hitting a button that deletes your entire essay midway through. This chapter presents the basic rules of the computer-based test, clues you in to the icons you’ll see on every page, and explains how to appropriately select your answers.
Bracing Yourself for the Tutorials Before taking the GRE, you must work through four tutorials. And no, you can’t get out of ’em, even if you have a degree in computer science. ETS (the organization that creates and administers the GRE) doesn’t allow anyone exposure to its GRE software prior to the test. Consequently, these tutorials are important so that you get comfy with the screen and the way the material looks. We really wanted to show you the screen ourselves, but ETS keeps it under lock and key. The tutorials occur at the very beginning of the test, and you have 30 minutes to work through them. Note: This time is separate from the testing time. Here’s what each of the four tutorials explains: ⻬ How to use a mouse ⻬ How to select an answer (although it doesn’t tell you how to pick the right answer — the nerve of these people!) ⻬ How to use the testing tools ⻬ How to scroll
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective A quick note on scrolling: On the Reading Comprehension passages, you may occasionally need to scroll through the text. The questions will be on the right-hand side while the text remains on the left. To move the text, simply click the up or down arrows located on the scroll bar. Although the answers to your questions may not be flexible, the reading passages always will be.
Knowing the Rules so You Don’t Sink Your Score Before you ever set foot inside a testing center, you need to be familiar with the following rules that rule your GRE experience: ⻬ Forget about skipping ahead to the next screen and then trying to return to the previous screen. You absolutely must answer the question on the screen. We know, we know. You’re used to the old paper-and-pencil tests, where you could skip around to your heart’s desire. Unfortunately, the GRE folks have taken that luxury away from you. ⻬ Don’t waste time trying to change a confirmed answer. Answer each question with confidence because after you click the Confirm Answer button, there’s no going back. ⻬ Keep an eye on the clock. The running clock is located on the upper left-hand side of your screen. The Time icon, however, is located on the bottom left-hand side. We recommend that you avoid hitting the Time icon because you’ll turn off the running clock if you do — and that’s never a good idea on a timed test! (Except of course when you’re trying to answer the first five questions in the Math or Verbal sections, as we explain in Chapter 2.) If you accidently click the Time icon and the running clock goes away, don’t fret. All you have to do is click the Time icon again for the running clock to reappear. ⻬ Stick with the test, no matter what. Although you have the option of exiting the whole test or a particular section at any time (see the next section for the scoop on the icons that allow you to do just that), tucking your tail between your legs and slinking out of the testing center does you no good. Even if you decide halfway through that you aren’t going to send these scores to your graduate school of choice, wait to act on that decision until after you finish taking the test. Remember: You paid for this great experience, so you may as well make the best of it and use the time as practice for your next go-round.
What You See Is What You Get: On-Screen Icons The desktop of a testing-center computer isn’t going to look like your home computer’s desktop. That means no instant-messaging programs or computerized card games. Instead, you get up close and personal with six GRE on-screen icons: the wicked left-hand ones and the benevolent right-hand ones. You must be able to identify these different icons so that you don’t accidently delete your test, or worse, lose the greatest GRE test score on the planet. In general, we recommend you steer clear of the bottom left-hand side of the screen. But because the enemy you know is always better than the one you don’t, allow us to introduce you to the wicked, left-hand GRE icons:
Chapter 3: Getting Familiar with the Computerized GRE ⻬ Quit Test: Avoid this icon at all costs. Clicking Quit Test ends your testing experience immediately. You don’t pass go, you don’t collect 200 bucks. You go to jail, or worse, go home with shame. So why would the GRE powers-that-be give you this icon? Well, you’re not their slave. If for some reason you can’t continue with the GRE, you have the option to get up and leave. However, being sick and tired of this darn exam isn’t a good reason to click Quit Test. ⻬ Exit Section: The Exit Section icon isn’t as dangerous as the Quit Test one because you only choose to quit the section you’re currently working on. The computer then takes you to the next section, and you abandon your score on the previous section. Still, exiting a section really isn’t worth it. At the very least, you can probably use the practice. Personally, we can’t understand why the GRE folks even give you this option — unless of course you get a sudden case of Montezuma’s revenge in the middle of the Math section. ⻬ Time: The Time icon is another hidden danger. Clicking it can cause the running clock (which lets you know how much time you have left for the test — a rather important program, don’t you think?) to disappear. The bottom right-hand side is home to the following better-intentioned icons: ⻬ Help: Clicking the Help icon won’t give you the answer to a question. In fact, it won’t give you any hints at all! So why do they even bother calling it the Help icon? Because clicking this button gives you a rehash of the original directions for the section you’re working on. Quite frankly, the Help icon isn’t all that helpful — unless of course you managed not to read the directions in the first place. ⻬ Next: The Next icon tells the computer that you’re ready to move on. You’re confident that you have the right answer, and you’re ready to tackle the next question. Right? Fortunately, the computer is a bit compassionate; clicking Next after answering a question takes you to the Confirm Answer icon, which then puts your wisdom in stone. ⻬ Confirm Answer: The Confirm Answer icon is your friend. It’s the only button that allows you to move forward and get this darn test over with. After you’re certain of your answer, you have no choice but to click this icon. Just remember that after you confirm your answer, you can’t go back and change it. Your choice — wrong or right — is a done deal.
Blacking In the Bubbles: How to Select Your Answers Although our practice tests and sample questions are set up with answer choices from A to E, the actual computer-based test uses bubbles that you must click to select your answer. Use your mouse to move the cursor on the screen until it’s hovering over the bubble you want to choose as your answer. Clicking the wrong bubble with your mouse is very easy to do, so pay special attention to which bubble you select. Also, know that you can always change your blacked-in bubble before you click the Next icon. If you change your mind after that point, we’re afraid you’re stuck with your first guess.
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Chapter 4
Starting with the Easy Stuff: Analogies In This Chapter 䊳 Understanding the format of an analogy 䊳 Answering an analogy question with a simple two-step approach 䊳 Recognizing the nasty and vile traps built into analogies 䊳 Building your vocabulary with prefixes and suffixes 䊳 Identifying and avoiding stupid (trap) answers
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nswer: The shiny red bike you got for your tenth birthday. Your first kiss from someone who wasn’t related to you. Analogies.
Question: Name three of the best gifts you’ve ever received. Analogies are a gift. Manna from heaven. Freebies. For most test-takers, Analogy sections are places to rack up the points big time. The number of Analogy questions on the computerbased GRE can vary, but you’ll almost certainly have at least seven. The great thing about analogies is that they’re doable. Some of the Reading Comprehension passages are ridiculously hard. Some of the Sentence Completion questions are so long you may be tempted to take a snooze in the middle of them. But analogies are great. You read 12 words, apply a few tricks, and you’re outta there.
If Only All Relationships Were This Easy: The Format Some people look at analogies and wonder, “Where’s the question?” Even though analogies can be quite simple (with practice), we admit the format is bizarre. Here’s an example of what an analogy looks like: PIG : STY :: (A) teenager : rubble (B) roommate : bathroom (C) bird : nest (D) swine : house (E) barnacle : barn (Note: On the actual test, the answer choices are accompanied by ovals to click and aren’t labeled with the letters A, B, C, D, and E.)
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective You see two words in uppercase letters. The five answer choices each consist of two words in lowercase letters. Not a lot of reading here. When you get good at analogies, you can zoom through them faster than you can finish a pint of ice cream. Your job when faced with an Analogy question? Identify the relationship between the question words and then choose a pair of answer words that expresses the same relationship.
Approaching Analogy-Solving Perfection: A Two-Step Program When you see an Analogy question, you should take this very straightforward, two-step approach: 1. Use both words in a descriptive sentence. Make a sentence using the words. Avoid something vague and useless such as “has.” For example, don’t just say, “A pig has a sty.” That sentence tells you nothing — you have no idea what the relationship between a pig and a sty is. Pretend that a Bulgarian exchange student comes up to you and says, “Excuse me, please. What is the connection between a pig and a sty?” If you answer that a pig has a sty, the Bulgarian may go away thinking that a sty is a curly tail, a snout, or a big stink. But if you say, “A pig lives in a sty,” your Bulgarian buddy now understands the relationship. A good sentence paints a mental picture: You can actually see the scene in your mind. 2. Apply the exact same sentence to each answer choice. Go through each of the answer choices using your sentence. (A) A teenager lives in rubble. Maybe you flash back to your teenage years and recall having to wade through the detritus (trash, rubble) of your bedroom to get to the door, but this is the GRE. The test-makers assume you were a sweet little kid who obeyed your parents, respected traffic signals, and didn’t ever use the middle finger of your hand for pointing or otherwise gesticulating. By the way, rubble is the ruined remains of a building, such as knocked-down bricks and junk. If you forget this word, think of Barney Rubble from the Flintstones. He’s short, like a knocked-down pile. (B) A roommate lives in the bathroom. It may seem like it sometimes, but it ain’t so. Any answer that’s funny, witty, or charming is almost certainly the wrong answer. (The GRE has noooooo sense of humor; you can count on that.) If you think an answer is funny — or desperately trying to be funny — you can be sure that it’s wrong. (C) A bird lives in a nest. Sounds pretty good, but you still need to go through all the answer choices, just in case. Just like not marrying the first person you kiss, don’t immediately choose the first answer that looks good. Something may come along later that makes you happier. (D) A swine lives in a house. If you like this answer, remind us not to come to your home! The trap here is that a pig (from the question) and a swine are much the same. Be careful: Just because words are connected in meaning doesn’t mean the answer is right. What’s being tested is the relationship between the words. For example, the question may be about perfume, and the correct answer may involve sweat socks. No connection.
Chapter 4: Starting with the Easy Stuff: Analogies (E) A barnacle lives in a barn. If you don’t know what a barnacle is, you may be tempted to pick Choice E, but Choice C is the right answer. A barnacle is a creature that lives in the water (not in a barn) and often attaches itself to the bottoms of ships. You scrape the barnacles off the ship periodically to clean the ship’s hull. Correct Answer: Choice C.
They Really Are Out to Get You: Avoiding Traps and Tricks with a Few Good Tips Face it — discovering traps, tricks, and tips is why you really bought this book. You want to know about those little built-in traps that are just sitting there, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting victims. What time bombs have the test-makers created, ready to go off in your face? The following sections present a few, along with suggestions for how to deal with ’em.
Turn a verb into an infinitive No, an infinitive isn’t the latest Japanese import car. An infinitive is the “to” form of any verb: to drink, to burp, to party. When an analogy features a verb, turn it into an infinitive, and the sentence practically writes itself. GIGGLE : LAUGH :: To giggle is to laugh a little bit. YELL : TALK :: To yell is to talk loudly. RUN : WALK :: To run is to walk rapidly. Notice that we’re adding another word on the end. Usually this word is an adverb to answer the “How?” question. How do you laugh when you giggle? A little bit. How do you talk when you yell? Loudly. How do you walk when you run? Rapidly. Saying “To giggle is to laugh” isn’t enough. You want to fine-tune the sentence; tweak it a little bit to clarify the relationship between the words.
Determine the part of speech of the question word Sometimes your sentence is easier to write if you know which part of speech — noun, verb, or adjective — a difficult word is. You find out by looking at the word’s counterparts in the answer choices. That is, if you want to know which part of speech the first word in the question is, look at the first words in the answers. If you want to know which part of speech the second word in the question is, look at the second words in the answer choices. DASHIKI : TAILOR :: (A) shovel : professor (B) table : singer (C) garment : jock (D) cake : baker (E) book : poseur
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective Don’t know what the word dashiki means? You’re not alone; it’s a pretty hard word. Not to worry. You know by looking at the first words in the answer choices — shovel, table, garment, cake, and book — that dashiki must be a noun and is a thing. (Remember that nouns are persons, places, or things.) Your very simple sentence should be: “A dashiki is a thing of a tailor.” That’s all you can do for now. Go through each answer choice: (A) shovel : professor — Although it can get deep in the classroom sometimes, a shovel isn’t standard equipment for a professor. (B) table : singer — A singer may stretch herself out on a table during a Las Vegas lounge act while doing a sexy, sultry number, but a table isn’t normally associated with a singer. (C) garment : jock — This is a trap answer. You may be tempted to choose it because a tailor (from the question) deals with garments. However, you’re well aware that the meanings of the question words aren’t necessarily related to the answer; the relationship between the pairs of words is what’s important. Had the question said GARMENT : SEAMSTRESS or even GARMENT : MODEL, this would’ve been a good choice. But a garment isn’t necessarily a thing of a jock. (D) cake : baker — A cake is a thing of a baker. Yeah, this answer sounds pretty good because a logical connection exists. Try the next one to be sure, knowing that Choice D is probably right. (E) book : poseur — This answer is put here to trap people who immediately assume that the hardest word in a question, or any word they themselves don’t know, must be the correct answer. A poseur is someone with an attitude, a person who adopts an affected style. People who go around using words like poseur are often poseurs themselves. The right answer is Choice D. A dashiki, by the way, is a type of shirt, and a tailor creates a dashiki just as a baker creates a cake. See? You can get the question right without knowing what the word means. Correct Answer: Choice D.
Look for the salient features of a word The salient feature is what makes something stand out. The salient feature of a basketball player is his or her height. The salient feature of a genius is his or her intelligence. So when we say you should look for the salient features of a word, we want you to determine what’s significant about that word. MINNOW : FISH :: (A) elephant : animal (B) recluse : shy (C) gnat : insect (D) giraffe : quadruped (E) votary : peremptory The salient feature of a minnow is that it’s a small fish. Although most of the answers are or may be synonyms (an elephant is an animal; a recluse may be shy), only Choice C gives the salient or outstanding feature. A gnat is a small insect. Choice E features antonyms. A votary is a devoted follower (think of a votary as an elegant, grown-up groupie). Peremptory means absolute, imperative, allowing no disagreement. The boss may be peremptory; the votary would more likely be docile (easily swayed, compliant). Correct Answer: Choice C.
Chapter 4: Starting with the Easy Stuff: Analogies
Work backward Question: Is it okay to make the sentence by using the words backward? Answer: Sure, as long as you remember to use the answer choices backward as well. That is, don’t say, “A tailor makes a dashiki,” and then say, “A cake makes a baker.”
Identify common relationships Certain standard relationships are often found in analogies. A plethora (a lot) of them exist, but here are ten of the more useful ones.
1. Opposites BIG : LITTLE PULCHRITUDINOUS : UGLY
2. Synonyms HAPPY : GLAD PUSILLANIMOUS : COWARDLY
3. Cause and effect TICKLE : LAUGHTER OSSIFY : BONE
4. Part to whole TOES : FOOT TALON : EAGLE
5. Position FRAME : PICTURE (a frame goes around a picture) SHOULDER : ROAD (a shoulder is to the side of a road)
6. Greater to lesser OVERJOYED : HAPPY CATACLYSMIC : UNFORTUNATE
7. Location PIG : STY RABBIT : WARREN
8. Purpose or function PILOT : FLY PUGILIST : BOX
9. Characteristic BLEAT : SHEEP (a bleat is the sound a sheep makes) POD : WHALES (a pod is a group of whales)
10. Member to group (or specific to general) FORK : UTENSIL ISLANDS : ARCHIPELAGO (an archipelago is a group of islands)
Use roots, prefixes, and suffixes Other women like “I love you,” but we live for “roots, prefixes, suffixes.” These three words can bump up your score significantly. If you know just a few basic roots, prefixes, and suffixes, you can write magnificent analogy sentences and avoid falling into traps. Suppose you encounter this question: IMPECUNIOUS : MONEY :: If you don’t know impecunious, you may be tempted to make the words synonyms and simply say, “Impecunious is money.” A tempting and logical answer may be reservoir : water, for example. Alas, once again you pay the price for giving in to temptation. If you know that -ous means full of and im- means not, you can make a good sentence: “Impecunious is not full of money.” That changes the whole picture. Now the right answer may be, for example, vacuum : air. A vacuum is not full of air. Note that a reservoir in fact is full of water — the opposite of your relationship sentence.
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective Although you can memorize hundreds of prefixes and suffixes, we realize that you have a limited number of brain cells that you’re willing to devote to this subject. So here’s a list of ten commonly used prefixes and eight commonly used suffixes, with examples of each. Memorize them. Burn them into your brain. (We get to some of the more common roots in Chapter 8. After all, we don’t want you to get overexcited by this stuff all at once.)
Prefixes 1. a- = not or without: Someone amoral is without morals, like the sadist who designed the GRE. Someone atypical isn’t typical, like the students who wear pocket protectors and love to take tests. Someone apathetic is uncaring or without feeling, like most testtakers by the time they finish the GRE and are leaving the exam room. (“The world is going to end tomorrow? Fine. That means I can get some sleep tonight.”) 2. an- = not or without: An anaerobic environment is without oxygen (like the test room feels when a killer question leaves you gasping for air). Anarchy is without rule or government (like a classroom when a substitute teacher is in for the day). 3. eu- = good: A eulogy is a good speech, usually given for the dearly departed at a funeral. A euphemism is a good way of saying something or a polite expression, like saying that someone has passed away rather than calling her worm meat. 4. ben-/bon- = good: A benefit is something that has a good result, an advantage. Someone benevolent is good and kind; when you have a date, a benevolent father lets you take his new car rather than your old junker. Bon voyage means “have a good voyage;” a bon vivant is a person who lives the good life. 5. caco- = bad: Something cacophonous is bad sounding, such as nails on a chalkboard. 6. ne-/mal- = bad: Something negative is bad, like a negative attitude. Someone nefarious is “full of bad,” or wicked and evil, such as a nefarious wizard in a fantasy novel. Something malicious also is “full of bad,” or wicked and harmful, such as a malicious rumor that you’re really a 30-year-old undercover narc. 7. im- = not: Something impossible isn’t possible — it just can’t happen. Someone immortal isn’t going to die but will live forever. Someone implacable isn’t able to be calmed down; she’s stubborn. Notice that im- can also mean inside (immerse means to put into), but that meaning isn’t as common on the GRE. First, think of im- as meaning not; if that doesn’t seem appropriate, switch to Plan B and see whether im- can mean inside in the context of the question. 8. in- = not: Something inappropriate isn’t appropriate, such as the language people may use in front of small children when studying for the GRE. Someone inept isn’t adept, meaning she’s not skillful. (Can you sue an inept surgeon who amputates the wrong leg? Nah, you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on!) Someone insolvent has no money and is bankrupt, like most students after four years of college. In- can also mean inside (innate means something born inside of you) or beginning (the initial letters of your name are the beginning letters). However, the most common meaning of in- is not. Think of that one first; if it doesn’t seem to work in a particular question, try the other meanings. 9. ante- = before: When the clock tells you that it’s 5 a.m., the a.m. stands for ante meridiem, which means before the middle or first half of the day. Antebellum means before the war. Tara in Gone with the Wind was an antebellum mansion, built before the Civil War. Antediluvian literally means before the flood, before Noah’s deluge. Figuratively, it means very old; if you call your mother antediluvian, you mean that she’s been around since before the flood. (It’s a great word to use as an insult because almost no one knows what it means and you can get away with it.) 10. post- = after: When the clock tells you that it’s 5 p.m., the p.m. stands for post meridiem. It means after the middle or second half of the day. Something postmortem occurs after death. A postmortem exam is an autopsy.
Chapter 4: Starting with the Easy Stuff: Analogies
Flash your friends: How to use flashcards Go out and buy three packages of the largest index cards you can find. One package should be white cards; the other two should each be a different color. Put all the roots, prefixes, and suffixes you learn that have negative connotations on cards of one color. For example, nemeans bad or not; put it on a brown card. Ben- means good; put it on a pink card. Because -ous means full of, it doesn’t feel good or bad; it’s neutral. Put it on a white card. When you get to the exam, you may encounter the word nefarious. You know you’ve seen it before, but you can’t for the life of you remember what it means. Then a little picture unfolds in front of your eyes: You see ne- on a brown card. Aha! If it’s on a brown card, it must be something negative. Just knowing that much often helps you get the right answer. Say the analogy is NEFARIOUS : SAINT. Normally, you assume that the words are synonyms and say, “A saint is nefarious.” However, remembering that ne- is on a
brown card, which means that it’s negative, makes you change the sentence to “A saint is not nefarious,” because saints are generally considered pretty good. There’s no right or wrong way to classify the roots. If you think that a root is positive, fine, it’s positive. If you think that a root is negative, fine, it’s negative. The whole purpose of flashcards is to help you associate the words. Go with whatever works for you. Bonus! When you come across a word that incorporates the root, put that word on the card as an example. That way, you learn both the root and the vocabulary word: two for the price of one. If you’re reading a newspaper article about a program that will have a salubrious effect on the economy, note that sal means health and -ous means full of. You know immediately that the word means healthful. Put it on both the sal card and the -ous card. You’ll learn the vocabulary without even realizing it!
Suffixes 1. -ette = little: A cigarette is a little cigar. A dinette table is a little dining table. A coquette is a little flirt (literally, a little chicken, but that doesn’t sound as pretty). 2. -illo = little: An armadillo is a little armored animal. A peccadillo is a little sin. (Do you speak Spanish? Then you probably know that pecar translates as “to sin” in English.) 3. -ous = full of (very): Someone joyous is full of joy. Someone amorous is full of amour, or love. Someone pulchritudinous is full of beauty, and therefore beautiful. 4. -ist = a person: A typist is a person who types. A pugilist is a person who fights (pug means war or fight), a boxer. A pacifist is a person who believes in peace, a noncombatant (pac means peace or calm). 5. -ify (-efy) = to make: To beautify is to make beautiful. To ossify is to make bone. (If you break your wrist, it takes weeks to ossify again, or for the bone to regenerate.) To deify is to make into a deity, a god. 6. -ize = to make: To alphabetize is to make alphabetical. To immunize is to make immune. To ostracize is to make separate from the group, or to shun. 7. -ate = to make: To duplicate is to make double. To renovate is to make new again (nov means new). To placate is to make peaceful or calm (plac means peace or calm). 8. -ity = a noun suffix that doesn’t actually mean anything; it just turns a word into a noun: Jollity is the noun form of jolly. Serenity is the noun form of serene. Timidity is the noun form of timid.
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective
The Terminator: Eliminating Idiotic Answers The first answer to eliminate is the backward one. Putting answers in reverse order is a common trap. If the question goes from greater to lesser (OVERJOYED : CONTENT), the possible answers almost certainly contain a trap that goes from lesser to greater (displeased : furious). Look for it and then throw it out the window. Another good answer to eliminate is one that duplicates the meaning rather than the relationship between the words. The question may be PROFESSOR : EDUCATED. The words are synonyms. A good answer to eliminate is teacher : moronic. Even though a professor is a teacher and those words have the same meaning, the relationship between the trap answer words is antonymous, not synonymous. Finally, forget about humor. Anything that’s funny or trying to be funny is outta there. Correct answers are almost always dull and boring.
Déjà Vu Review Before going on to the practice questions, review what you’ve discovered about Analogy questions. Don’t forget to use this simple two-step approach to answering them: 1. Use both words in a descriptive sentence. 2. Apply the exact same sentence to each answer choice. Even if you don’t have a clue what the words in an analogy mean, you can often get the correct answer by using the following six tips, which help you to identify the relationship between the words well enough to make a reasonable guess: ⻬ Turn a verb into an infinitive. ⻬ Determine the part of speech of the question word — noun, verb, or adjective. ⻬ Look for the salient features of a word. ⻬ Work backward. ⻬ Identify common relationships. ⻬ Use roots, prefixes, and suffixes.
Ten words that Angelina Jolie never hears obese
rotund
corpulent
fleshy
flaccid
homely
drab
frowzy
unkempt
slovenly
Chapter 5
The Dirty Dozen: Analogy Practice Questions
R
eady to practice what we’ve been preaching? Here are Analogy practice questions to get you into the swing of things. This chapter is loaded with good vocabulary words. Don’t forget to pay extra-careful attention to the words in this font: vocabulary word.
1. PEANUT : SHELL :: (A) atom : proton (B) clock : dial (C) corn : husk (D) emollient : solid (E) enamel : tooth Make a simple sentence defining the relationship between the words: “A peanut is surrounded by a shell.” Corn is surrounded by a husk. Correct Answer: Choice C. Choice E is backward. Enamel isn’t surrounded by a tooth but vice versa. Keep your eyes open for a backward answer among the answer choices; those evil test-makers frequently put one there to getcha. 2. HYMN : SONG :: (A) screech : whisper (B) waltz : dance (C) misnomer : correction (D) discussion : altercation (E) smile : reproof A simple sentence is “A hymn is a type of song.” A waltz is a type of dance. A screech is a loud noise, just the opposite of a whisper. Your tires screech when you take the corner wide in your rush to get to the GRE after oversleeping. (We know — we shouldn’t even joke about such a thing!) In Choice C, a misnomer is the wrong name — calling someone Tracy rather than Stacy, for example. Thus, it’s not a correction but a mistake. An altercation is a disagreement. Although an altercation may involve a discussion, Choice D isn’t as good an answer as Choice B. In Choice E, a reproof is a condemnation, a criticism. Correct Answer: Choice B. 3. CHUCKLE : MERRIMENT :: (A) goose bumps : denial (B) blush : glee (C) scowl : perfidy (D) wince : discomfort (E) shout : fury
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective Make your sentence: “A chuckle indicates merriment” or “A chuckle is the result of merriment.” Merriment is just what it looks like: happiness. The suffix -ment doesn’t mean anything; it just turns a word into a noun, as you can see with content and contentment, or argue and argument. A wince (an involuntary shrinking back or flinching) indicates discomfort. You wince when your dearly beloved says to you, “We have to talk.” In Choice A, goose bumps indicate cold or fright, not denial. Choice B can trap a careless reader who thinks that this answer fits because glee means happiness or merriment. In Choice C, perfidy means disloyalty. Choice E is a “maybe so, maybe not” answer. A shout may indicate fury (you shout at the ATM when it gobbles up and shreds your debit card), but the connection isn’t absolute. Correct Answer: Choice D. Choose an answer based on the relationship between the words, not on the meanings of the words. The question can be about houses and the answer about cantaloupes; the meanings of the words in the question and the correct answer don’t need to have any connection whatsoever. 4. COW : TERRIFY :: (A) praise : denounce (B) interest : fascinate (C) invigorate : exhaust (D) soothe : agitate (E) diminish : lessen Okay, suppose you have no idea what the word cow as a verb means. You can still get this question right by the process of elimination. The relationships between the answers in Choices A, C, and D are all that of antonyms. Because they can’t all be correct, they must all be wrong. You now know that cow and terrify aren’t antonyms. As quickly as that, you’ve narrowed the answers down to two, but can you narrow the answers down even further? The relationship between the words in Choice B is lesser to greater; that is, interesting someone is less intense than fascinating that person. Because terrify, in the question, is such a strong word, it’s unlikely that the first word, cow, is something even stronger. Just so you know, to cow means to intimidate, to browbeat. Correct Answer: Choice B. Words often possess more than one meaning — a fact that a test question may key into. If your first response seems to make no sense in the context of the question (“Why would a cow terrify anyone?”), think of alternate meanings of the word or words. 5. XENOPHOBIC : STRANGERS :: (A) claustrophobic : Christmas (B) hydrophobic : fires (C) agoraphobic : open spaces (D) pyromaniac : animals (E) romantic : love You may not know the word xenophobic, but you can deduce that phobic means fearful of because you know such relatively easy words as hydrophobia (fear of water) and claustrophobia (fear of closed spaces). Go ahead and make the sentence: “Xenophobic is fearful of strangers.” Agoraphobic means fearful of open spaces. An agoraphobe is often afraid to leave the house at all. When it’s your turn to shovel the snow off the front walk, you may suddenly turn into an agoraphobe.
Chapter 5: The Dirty Dozen: Analogy Practice Questions Choice A is a lame attempt at humor (and won’t be found on the actual GRE, which contains no humor at all, lame or otherwise). Claustrophobic doesn’t mean fearing Santa Claus and Christmas. Hydrophobic means fearing water, not fires. A pyromaniac has a love of fire. Someone romantic has a love of love, not a fear of love. Correct Answer: Choice C. 6. ELEGIAC : JOY :: (A) innocuous : harm (B) phlegmatic : peace (C) implacable : tranquility (D) dynamic : energy (E) disparaging : insults Something elegiac isn’t full of joy. An elegy is a sad or mournful poem. Something innocuous isn’t full of harm. (Figure this one out by using your roots, prefixes, and suffixes: In- usually means not; noc means harm; -ous means full of. Put that all together and you get this: not full of harm.) Often, if you don’t know a word, you can make the “is” sentence: Elegiac is joy. But, in this case, we made the question an opposite to make you miss it and, therefore, to help you remember the word elegiac (sad or mournful). But you can still get this question correct because Choice D, dynamic, does mean full of energy, and Choice E, disparaging, does mean full of insults. Because two answers can’t both be correct, they must both be wrong. Figuring that out should send you back to the drawing board to change your line of thinking from an “is” to an “is not” sentence. Choice B, phlegmatic, means calm, composed. Now that you know this word, you can remain phlegmatic when you encounter it on the GRE and not panic. Choice C, implacable, means unable to be calmed. An implacable toddler yells, “NO!” no matter what the harassed parents suggest. (Do you see the roots, prefixes, and suffixes? Im- means not; plac means peace or calm; -able means able to be. Someone implacable is “unable to be calmed down,” or just plain stubborn.) Correct Answer: Choice A. 7. PECCADILLO : TRANSGRESSION :: (A) felony : crime (B) nibble : bite (C) alias : name (D) cacophony : noise (E) eructation : volcano You know the suffix -illo means small or little. Make the sentence: “A peccadillo is a small transgression.” You don’t even need to know what the words mean to get a good sentence. (A peccadillo is a small wrong or fault. A transgression is a trespass or sin, a wrong.) A nibble is a small bite. In Choice C, an alias is a different name, not a small name. In Choice D, cacophony is a bad or harsh sound, such as our singing voices or the sounds of an orchestra warming up. Roots, prefixes, and suffixes help you to define this word; caco- means bad, phon means sound. Put them together and you get “bad sound.” Choice E is our gift to you, a little comic relief. An eructation is a belch. Although a volcano may eructate, an eructation itself isn’t a volcano. Correct Answer: Choice B.
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective 8. PROGNOSTICATION : SOOTHSAYER :: (A) tumult : arbitrator (B) duplicity : idiot (C) fanaticism : zealot (D) adulation : adult (E) retrospection : prophet Whoa! Suddenly these words have gotten terribly hard. Try saying: “Prognostication is soothsayer.” Okay. Apparently you’re looking for two answer words that are synonyms, or that (at the very least) mean nearly the same thing.
Fanaticism is the state of being a fanatic (did you know that the word fan, like a rock star’s groupie, comes from the word fanatic?), or being really into something. Zealous also means very into something, enthusiastic, or involved. The words are synonyms. A zealot is one who is zealous. You may have known the words for Choice C but not for the other answers. Here’s a quick review. Perhaps you’re familiar with tumult in another form, tumultuous, which means wild, chaotic, or disorganized. An arbitrator is a mediator, a go-between in a fight or controversy. An arbitrator’s job is to stop tumult, to calm matters down and bring about a rational discussion. The words are closer to antonyms than synonyms. By the way, a favorite trick of the GRE powers-that-be is to give you a common word in an uncommon form, just to confuse you and make your life miserable. For example, do you know this word? RUTH Seeing it all by itself like that, you may swear you’ve never seen the word before. But you probably know it in another form: RUTHLESS Ah, you know that ruthless means cruel, without pity or compassion. Work backward. If ruthless means without pity, ruth must mean with pity. Ruth is pity or compassion, kindness, and mercy. (By the way, Ruth also used to be a very popular girl’s name.) The moral of the story? When you see a word that looks slightly familiar, knock it around a little bit. Change its form to see whether you can discover its meaning more easily. Tumult is just the noun form of the more common word tumultuous. In Choice B, duplicity is the quality of being dup, or double, as in double-dealing, doublecrossing, and double-talking. Benedict Arnold was noted for his duplicity. The word has nothing to do with being an idiot. However, there’s a trick here. A dupe, a person who has been double-crossed or swindled, is in fact rather idiotic. That’s an easy trap to fall for. Choice D is silly. Adulation has nothing to do with being an adult. Adulation is hero worship, extreme admiration. You may have adulation for a war hero or for the person who discovers the cure for cancer. The words in Choice E are also closer to antonyms than to synonyms. Retrospection is a look back, a review. A prophet is supposed to prophesy or predict the future, not look back at the past. Correct Answer: Choice C.
Chapter 5: The Dirty Dozen: Analogy Practice Questions 9. EXCULPATE : BLAME :: (A) demean : average (B) compromise : peril (C) proliferate : abundance (D) perturb : exasperation (E) exonerate : guilt Just to keep you on your toes, we put in a question in which the right answer actually does have the same meaning as the question words. This situation is rare, but we always want to emphasize to you that our suggestions are tips, not rules. Never shut off your own brain in favor of ours. To exculpate is to remove blame. Again, think of your roots, prefixes, and suffixes: ex- means out of or away from; culp means guilt or blame; -ate means to make. Together they mean “to make away from guilt or blame.” When your roommate comes in breathing fire because someone has borrowed his car and put a big dent in it, you thank your lucky stars that you went to class with friends in their car that day and have witnesses to exculpate you. To exonerate is the same thing — to remove the guilt, or blame. A defense attorney sends his or her investigators out looking for evidence to exonerate a client. To compromise means to imperil, to put into danger. For example, a young girl who stays out all night long with her date — even though they’re just talking — compromises her reputation. A government official seen fraternizing with lobbyists may be compromising her integrity, putting it into some question or doubt. As you learned with cow in Question 4, words may possess more than one meaning. The first definition most people provide for compromise is to come to terms by mutual concession, to meet in the middle and agree. Because that meaning has no connection with peril, you need to wrack your brains for another, less common meaning. In Choice C, to proliferate is to grow in number or size, to become more abundant. The most common meaning of pro- on the GRE is big or much; a proliferation is an abundance, or very much. In Choice D, to perturb is to exasperate, to annoy, or to harass. If you missed this question, you’re probably perturbed and exasperated with yourself. Correct Answer: Choice E. 10. DESICCATE : MOISTURE :: (A) sanction : restrictions (B) enervate : energy (C) swindle : chicanery (D) attenuate : attention (E) derogate : epithets To desiccate is to dry out, to remove moisture. (Ever hear of desiccated liver tablets? Some health-food stores sell them for people who want the health benefits of liver but prefer to ingest it in dehydrated or pill form.) You can figure out this relationship by knowing that de means out of or away from: A desiccant moves moisture out of or away from something. To enervate is to devitalize, to remove energy from, to weaken. Choice A, to sanction is to restrict. You probably know about economic sanctions, in which a government prohibits businesses from working with companies in other countries. To sanction, therefore, is to add restrictions rather than take them away. In Choice C, to swindle is to cheat or trick, as in swindling someone out of his money. Chicanery is trickery in matters
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective of law. Thus, to swindle isn’t to take away chicanery but to add to it. In Choice D, to attenuate isn’t to take away attention (you didn’t fall for such a cheesy trick, did you?) but to make slender, thin, or diluted. An emaciated person looks attenuated. In Choice E, to derogate is to denounce or be critical of. An epithet is a descriptive term often used derogatorily or critically. Correct Answer: Choice B. 11. TOADY : SYCOPHANT :: (A) recluse : pedant (B) heretic : leader (C) malingerer : prodigy (D) bluestocking : gymnast (E) miser : penny-pincher If you don’t know the words in the question, you’re not alone. They’re very difficult words put there in the hopes that you remember what to do when you don’t have a clue: First, try making the words synonyms. Make the simple sentence: A toady is a sycophant. As it turns out, that’s correct. Both a toady and a sycophant are over-flatterers, kiss-ups, and yes-men. A groupie to a rock star is both a toady and a sycophant. A student trying to get the professor to turn a borderline A–/B+ into the A is a toady and a sycophant. In the correct answer, Choice E, a miser (a cheapskate, someone stingy) is in fact a penny-pincher. A penny-pincher is a cheap person, one who “pinches” pennies and holds them securely, not letting them go or spending them. Here are the definitions for the other words. A recluse is a hermit, a solitary person. You may have heard this word in another form: reclusive. A pedant is a teacher, especially one who is overly precise and didactic. A heretic is a rebel, particularly one who doesn’t agree with the orthodox religion. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake as a heretic. A malingerer is one who pretends to be sick in order to get out of work. Perhaps you yourself have been a malingerer on the morning of a big exam at school, swearing to a variety of symptoms that would kill an ox. A prodigy is a highly talented person (Mozart was a child prodigy). A bluestocking is a learned woman, especially one in literary circles. She has nothing to do with gymnastics. Correct Answer: Choice E. 12. PUGILIST : BELLICOSE :: (A) benefactor : beguiling (B) chatterbox : taciturn (C) narcissist : charismatic (D) scholar : erudite (E) imbecile : obsequious A pugilist is a boxer, one who fights (the root pug means war or fight, and -ist is a person). Bellicose is like belligerent: hostile, argumentative, and fighting. The test sentence is: “A pugilist is bellicose.” If you don’t know the words and assume that they’re synonyms, you’re right. A scholar is in fact erudite, which means well-educated or scholarly. In Choice A, a benefactor is a person who does good, one who brings benefits (to use a more common form of the word). He or she probably isn’t beguiling, which means tricking or confusing. In Choice B, a chatterbox is just what it looks like — one who chatters or talks a lot. Taciturn means not talkative, or “of few words.” A chatterbox isn’t taciturn.
Chapter 5: The Dirty Dozen: Analogy Practice Questions
Ever hear of a tacit agreement? It’s an unspoken agreement. Try to think of more common or familiar forms of a word you’re not familiar with. If you can remember how you use those words in context, you can often get a “good enough” definition for a difficult word. In Choice C, a narcissist is a person overflowing with self-love, someone who thinks he or she is just the most wonderful thing around. Although the narcissist may think that he or she is charismatic (inspiring loyalty), that’s not necessarily so. In Choice E, an imbecile is a feebleminded person, a fool (what most folks feel like when they don’t know all these words). An imbecile may or may not be obsequious, which means excessively flattering. Remember the toady and sycophant from Question 11? Now they would be obsequious. Correct Answer: Choice D.
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Part I: An Aerial View: Putting the GRE into Perspective
Part II
A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions
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In this part . . .
ne of the sections on the GRE is the Verbal section. The questions in this section come in four styles: Antonyms (finding words that are opposites), Analogies (far and away the easiest for most people), Sentence Completions (good ol’ fill-in-the-blanks, the same stuff you’ve been doing since kindergarten), and Reading Comprehension (dull and deadly). Each question style has a chapter of its own. You learn the format of the question (what it looks like), an approach to the question (where to begin and an organized plan of attack), and the various tricks and traps built into the questions (with, of course, suggestions for recognizing and avoiding ’em). Vocabularybuilding material features roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Following each lecture chapter is a chapter that includes particularly wicked practice questions as well as detailed answer explanations that show you what you should’ve done, how to make the best use of your time, and what you should’ve guessed at random.
Chapter 6
If Opposites Attract, Why Are Antonyms So Repulsive? In This Chapter 䊳 Getting the format down cold 䊳 Cruising through Antonym questions with the right approach 䊳 Using the inexact sciences of guessing and dissecting 䊳 Watching out for tricks, traps, and tips
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hink of antonyms as the terrible twos of the vocabulary world. Just like a cantankerous (grumpy) kid who answers your “Good morning!” with “No, it’s not; it’s a bad morning!” the GRE’s Antonym questions look to contradict everything.
Is That All There Is? The Format Antonyms are fish out of water, words out of context (clichés out of a For Dummies book). Antonym questions feature one word in capital letters followed by five lowercase answer choices. The prima donna antonym stands alone. You have no context to help you define the vocabulary. It’s you against the word. For example: LOQUACIOUS: (A) quotidian (B) taciturn (C) contentious (D) guileless (E) perfunctory Just so you don’t have to go running for your dictionary, we’ll tell you that the answer is Choice B. Loquacious means talkative. (Loq means speech or talk; -ous means full of. Someone loquacious is full of talk.) Taciturn means not talkative, quiet, saying little. Your task is to define the question word and then choose the answer with the most nearly opposite meaning. The good news is that doing so takes almost no time. These questions are over with faster than your last relationship. The bad news is that some of this vocabulary is so difficult you may think you’ve wandered into the Greek GRE by mistake.
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions
Let’s Get This Over with Fast: The Approach Antonyms are the least complicated questions on the GRE. Take a simple two-step approach: 1. Define the question word. 2. Choose the opposite. Sounds simple, right? It is . . . if you know what the question word means. If the question word is happy, choose sad. If the question word is tall, choose short. So far, so good. But what happens when you don’t know what the question word means?
All in a day’s work, labor, toil, pursuit, grind . . . Having an extensive vocabulary will help you with the Verbal and Analytical Writing sections of the GRE. One way you can improve your vocabulary quickly is to group words with similar meanings — to remember five or ten for the price of one. If you can remember harbinger, you can remember prescient. ⻬ I’m looking forward to this:
⻬ Just how boring is this vocabulary?
auguries
presage
banal
prosaic
bode
prescient
bromide
somniferous
harbinger
prognosis
ennui
soporific
portent
prognosticate
hackneyed
tedious
listless
trite
platitude
vapid
⻬ You have to keep your sense of humor: badinage
mirth
japing
puckish
jocose
ribald
audacity
intrepid
jocular
risible
doughty
redoubtable
jollity
twit
effrontery
uncowed
levity
wag
impudent
undaunted
⻬ It’s a sad day when you don’t know your vocabulary:
⻬ It takes a lot of guts to know these words:
⻬ Hip, hip, hooray! Words of praise:
bereft
lachrymose
accolade
obsequious
contrite
lugubrious
encomium
paean
doleful
maudlin
eulogy
panegyric
dour
saturnine
extol
plaudits
jeremiad
Weltschmerz
kudos
sycophant
laud
toady
⻬ That’s easy for you to say:
⻬ Are you sick to death of vocabulary?
declaim
prolix
exhort
raconteur
cadaver
morbid
persiflage
stentorian
demise
noxious
philippic
tergiversate
dirge
obsequies
pontificate
voluble
elegy
valetudinarian
insalubrious
wan
Chapter 6: If Opposites Attract, Why Are Antonyms So Repulsive?
What to Do When You Ain’t Got a Clue Suppose you look at a word and think it looks more like an inkblot test than any vocabulary word you’ve ever seen. The word may be cadging. Not a clue, right? (And no, it’s not a typo or a misspelling of cage.) What do you do next? You have three options: 1. Dissect and define the term using roots, prefixes, and suffixes. As we point out in Chapter 4, roots, prefixes, and suffixes are the real key to vocabulary on the GRE. Unfortunately, you haven’t learned a root, prefix, or suffix for cadging. Proceed to Step 2. 2. Eliminate answer choices that are synonyms of each other. Suppose that Choice A is bubbly and Choice D is effervescent. Both words mean exuberant or joyful. Because two answer choices can’t both be correct, they must both be wrong. 3. Bail out! Choose an answer and leave the scene as quickly as possible. Say you have no idea what the word means. It has no identifiable root, prefix, or suffix. No two of the answer choices mean the same thing. You have no way to narrow the answers down. What happens now? Guess and go. Choose something, anything, and go on to the next question. The biggest mistake you can make on an Antonym question is to waste time. The longer you sit there, staring at the word, scratching your head, and waiting for heavenly revelation, the more the test-makers in their dark cubbyholes chortle with glee at your struggling in the quagmire (bog) they designed for you. Get through an Antonym question quickly: You either know it or you don’t, and then you’re outta there. Think of an Antonym question as a blind date. You can tell in the first few minutes whether something is happening or not. (By the way, cadging means begging or scrounging. GRE students often cadge class notes from friends.)
Bad Things Come in Small Packages: Tricks, Traps, and Tips How, you wonder, can there be tricks and traps in a one-word question? Read ’em and weep.
Ignore the synonym You may be lucky enough to encounter a very difficult word that you just happen to remember. Pretend that the question word is pulchritudinous and that, having gone through the Analogies portion of this book, you remember that pulchritudinous means beautiful. Choice A is beautiful. You’re so pleased with yourself for remembering this hard word that you take Choice A (“Ah, there it is!”) and go on your merry way. It isn’t until you’re boasting to your friend later that afternoon about having remembered pulchritudinous that your mistake dawns on you: You were supposed to choose the antonym, not the synonym. In short: If you see a word in the answer choices whose meaning is the same, or nearly the same, as the question word, ignore it. The test-writing gnomes put it there just to ruin your day.
Use roots, prefixes, and suffixes As we mention throughout this material, roots, prefixes, and suffixes (RPS) can save you when you have to wade through this polysyllabic pit. If you haven’t memorized the prefixes
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions and suffixes in Chapter 4, we strongly suggest you do so. You can analyze even the most difficult word by using roots (check out Chapter 8). Even if you can’t get the exact definition, you can get a general idea of the word well enough to choose it or lose it. Suppose that the question word is abjure. You don’t know what it means, but you recall that the prefix ab- means away from. A queen abdicates a throne, or goes away from it. One of the answer choices is embrace. To embrace something is to take it as your own, to accept it, as in embracing the principles of democracy. If you trust your roots-sense and choose this answer, you can get a hard question correct in just a few seconds. (To abjure is to renounce or reject.)
Memorize connotation cards In Chapter 4, we suggest you create flashcards for the roots, prefixes, and suffixes. After you have those cards completed, you’re ready to move on to a more sophisticated type of flashing: connotation cards. Notice that we’re not wasting your time or ours by giving you a list of a thousand words. It’d be useless for you to sit down and try to memorize so many. You’d get to a point where each new word would supplant (displace, push out) a previous word. So how can you cram the most vocabulary into the least brain space? Memorize groups of words by their connotation. A connotation is an association or idea, an implication. It’s what the word means to you — how you remember it. Use index cards to cluster words by their connotations. For example, on one side of a card write fat, and on the other side write thin. Every time you encounter a word that has one of these meanings, put it on the card. On the fat side, you may have corpulent, fleshy, rotund, and obese. On the thin side, you may have emaciated, attenuated, svelte, and lanky. Suppose you get to the exam and see the word svelte but can’t for the life of you remember what it means. In your mind’s eye, you see the word on the fat/thin card. Voilà! Or on second thought: Ooops! Wait a minute: Does svelte mean fat, or does it mean thin? Write words with positive meanings in red ink and words with negative meanings in black ink. Maybe you consider being thin better than being fat. Write all the thin words in bright red ink to make them stand out. Write all the fat words in black ink. During the exam, you can remember that svelte is a red word on the fat/thin card, so it must mean thin. You’ll be surprised how many questions you can get correct without knowing precise definitions, just hazy general concepts. You may also benefit from drawing a picture of the definition of the words on each side of the card. Brains like visuals. You may not be able to remember the precise definition of the word, but your brain should be able to conjure up the picture on the card.
Don’t anticipate and misread The GRE often features some pretty bizarre-looking words. Our favorite is froward (stubborn). At least once a year, some student calls us, overjoyed at having “conquered” the GRE: “You won’t believe it. The GRE had a typo. One of the antonyms said froward instead of forward. However, the answer choice backward was there, so I had no trouble figuring it out.” No, no, a thousand times, no! The GRE has no typos. The GRE has no spelling errors. The GRE has no heart. It’s very easy to see what you want to see rather than read what’s actually shown on the screen. Double-check that you’ve read the word correctly, not rewritten the test to match your preconceptions.
Chapter 6: If Opposites Attract, Why Are Antonyms So Repulsive?
Peroration (A Summing Up) An Antonym question requires a simple, two-step approach: 1. Define the question word. 2. Choose the opposite. Antonyms are small but deadly. Remembering the following can help you get through these questions efficiently: ⻬ Use roots, prefixes, and suffixes. ⻬ Eliminate answer choices that are synonyms of each other or the question word. ⻬ Learn vocabulary words in clusters by using connotation cards and visuals. ⻬ Don’t anticipate and misread unusual words (such as froward ).
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Chapter 7
Unattractive Opposites: Antonym Practice Questions
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ou say you’ve been using a dictionary for a pillow the last six weeks, believing some of the words and their definitions would penetrate your skull via osmosis? Here’s a chance to test your theory. (Consider this chapter to be one big vocabulary list.) 1. CHANGING (A) lightweight (B) cautious (C) immutable (D) delicious (E) soft You can get this question correct by the process of elimination. The opposite of changing is unchanging or not changing. You know that lightweight, cautious, delicious, and soft don’t mean not changing, which quickly narrows the answers down to the correct one. Use your roots to define immutable. Im- means not; mut means change. Im-mut-able literally means not changeable, or unchanging. Correct Answer: Choice C. 2. RECUPERATE (A) sicken (B) invent (C) operate (D) elongate (E) balance To recuperate is to regain your health. The opposite is to sicken. Choice C has a small trap in it. A person recuperating may have been operated on, but just because an answer choice seems connected to the question word doesn’t mean the choice is correct. Did you use your common sense to eliminate Choice B? What word could possibly be the opposite of invent? As far as we know, no word means “uninvent.” If you can’t think of a logical opposite for a word, it’s probably not an antonym of the question. Correct Answer: Choice A.
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions 3. OPAQUE (A) old-fashioned (B) angry (C) improper (D) outdated (E) transparent Something opaque isn’t clear or see-through. It blocks the light (op means block or against). Something transparent is clear; it doesn’t block the light. Did you notice that you can eliminate Choices A and D because they’re synonyms of each other? If two words mean the same (or nearly the same) thing, they can’t both be correct and therefore must both be wrong. Correct Answer: Choice E. 4. LOQUACIOUS (A) elegant (B) quiet (C) overweight (D) excited (E) incapable Loq means speech or talk; -ous means full of or very. Someone loquacious is full of talk, or very talkative. The opposite is quiet. Correct Answer: Choice B. Most of our students are quite loquacious in telling us that their biggest problem is vocabulary. They just plain can’t remember pages and pages and pages of words. Our suggestion is always the same: Concentrate on learning roots, prefixes, and suffixes, which can expand your vocabulary exponentially. You can find a list of roots in Chapter 8 and lists of prefixes and suffixes in Chapter 4. 5. SKEPTICAL (A) fast-acting (B) punctual (C) depressed (D) credulous (E) effervescent If you’re skeptical, you’re dubious or doubtful. So you’re looking for a word that means not doubtful. Eliminate the words you know — Choices A, B, and C. You can define credulous by using roots and suffixes: cred means trust or belief; -ous means full of or very. Someone credulous is full of trust, and is therefore naive or gullible — just the opposite of skeptical. Effervescent means bubbly. When an Efferdent (a brand-name denture-cleaning tablet) is put into a glass of water, it bubbles. Correct Answer: Choice D.
Chapter 7: Unattractive Opposites: Antonym Practice Questions 6. VIABLE (A) solid (B) moribund (C) vital (D) integral (E) irreplaceable If you picked Choice C, you fell for the trap. Vital means essential, critical. Sure, vital has a vi like the question word, but that doesn’t mean vital is the right answer (and anyway, you’re looking for antonyms, not synonyms). Choices C, D, and E are similar enough in meaning that selecting one over the others would be hard. You can’t have three right answers, so eliminate them all.
Viable means livable, capable of working or developing adequately. A plan for learning several roots like vi (meaning life) daily is viable (it can be done). Moribund means near death or extinction. A company that’s bankrupt and firing employees may be described as moribund. Correct Answer: Choice B. 7. SALUBRIOUS (A) unhealthy (B) serendipitous (C) dour (D) rapid (E) monumental
Salubrious means healthful, wholesome, or salutary (sal means health, -ous means full of). Unhealthy is as logical an opposite as you’re ever going to find. Choice B, serendipitous, means fortuitous and can be used to describe a happy, lucky occurrence. Walking out your front door to find a hundred-dollar bill on your stoop would be serendipitous. Choice C, dour, means gloomy. Finding out that the hundred-dollar bill you so serendipitously found on the sidewalk features a picture not of Ben Franklin but of Alfred E. Neuman will leave you dour. Correct Answer: Choice A. 8. IRASCIBLE (A) mendacious (B) serpentine (C) phlegmatic (D) fatigued (E) tepid
Irascible means hot-tempered, easily angered. Choice C, phlegmatic, means slow, having a stolid temperament, not easily excited to action. Choice A, mendacious, means lying, dishonest, or untruthful. Don’t confuse the adjective mendacious, meaning dishonest, with the noun mendicant, a beggar. A mendicant may be mendacious when he tells you how he’s going to spend the quarter you just gave him. Choice B, serpentine, means like a snake, twisting or turning. The road to Pike’s Peak is a serpentine road. Choice E, tepid, means lukewarm. A tepid response to a marriage proposal should send you to your lawyer’s office to get a prenuptial agreement. Correct Answer: Choice C.
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions 9. FRANGIBLE (A) refulgent (B) histrionic (C) unbreakable (D) unfriendly (E) masculine
Frangible means breakable. The opposite, amazingly enough, is unbreakable. Choice A, refulgent, means shining, radiant, gleaming. Choice B, histrionic, means theatrical, hysterical, and dramatic. Correct Answer: Choice C. 10. PALLIATE (A) laud (B) appraise (C) exacerbate (D) befriend (E) mitigate To palliate is to soften, lessen, or assuage. You can palliate an insult by smiling to take the sting out. Choice C, to exacerbate, is to make more severe, to aggravate. You exacerbate a fight when you slam the door in your opponent’s face. Choice A, to laud, is to praise. (Think of applaud.) Choice D, to befriend, is to make a friend of. (Be- is a prefix meaning completely; however, you can basically ignore this prefix. To befriend someone is simply to “friend” him.) Choice E, mitigate, is the same as palliate. To mitigate is to lessen or decrease, to make less severe. You may have heard of “mitigating circumstances.” Hot-wiring and stealing a car is a felony that can land you in prison; if your wife is in labor and you have to get to the hospital pronto, that’s a mitigating circumstance (but if you take one of our cars, you have unmitigated gall!). Correct Answer: Choice C. 11. CONDIGN (A) incapable (B) inevitable (C) inconsistent (D) unremitting (E) undeserved
Condign means deserved or appropriate; the opposite (logically enough) is undeserved. A condign punishment if you don’t laugh at our jokes is to spend eternity listening to your parents’ old record albums. By the way, because inevitable and unremitting have closely related meanings, neither is the likely answer. Correct Answer: Choice E.
Chapter 7: Unattractive Opposites: Antonym Practice Questions 12. SALACIOUS (A) wholesome (B) rustic (C) noxious (D) merry (E) puissant
Salacious means lustful, lecherous, lewd — the opposite of wholesome. Choice B, rustic, means rural, appropriate for the country. Plus fours and a shooting stick make for a rustic outfit. Choice E, puissant, means strong, influential, powerful. Correct Answer: Choice A. Did you fall for the trap answer, Choice C? Sal means health; -ous means full of. No one can fault you if you thought salacious meant “full of health.” However, the word for that is salubrious. Choice C, noxious, means poisonous. It’s an antonym for salubrious, but not for salacious.
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Chapter 8
Finishing What You Start: Sentence Completions In This Chapter 䊳 Identifying Sentence Completion questions 䊳 Dissecting and simplifying the sentences 䊳 Eliminating wrong answers 䊳 Recognizing roots
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entence Completion questions are the blind dates of the GRE. What you see isn’t necessarily what you get . . . or what you want. Looks can be deceiving. Don’t judge a book by its cover. Beauty is only skin deep. Have we left out any other trite, banal, hackneyed clichés? The point of all this babbling is that Sentence Completion questions can be sneaky, tricky, duplicitous, and worse than they look. Fortunately, you can beat ’em at their own game.
Recognizing Sentence Completion Questions A Sentence Completion question consists of one sentence with one or two blanks. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to fill in those blanks. Usually only one word goes in each blank; occasionally, however, the blank requires a few words or a short phrase instead. Here’s an example: Disgusted at having to spend the entire weekend studying for the GRE instead of going hang gliding, Faye - - - - her book across the room with such - - - - that it soared high into the sky, causing three of her neighbors to call the UFO hot line. (A) tossed . . . gentleness (B) hurled . . . ferocity (C) pitched . . . glee (D) carried . . . gloom (E) conveyed . . . reluctance The key word in this example is disgusted, which indicates strong negative emotions. Although Choice D arguably meets the requirement of negative emotion, carried books don’t soar high into the sky; hurled books do. Only Choice B offers two words that match the tone of disgusted — and soared high into the air. Correct Answer: Choice B.
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Looking at the Sentence and Drawing a Blank Do you look at Sentence Completion questions and draw a blank? (Sorry, we couldn’t resist.) Knowing where to start is a great confidence builder and time saver. Try the following steps: 1. Read the entire sentence for its gist. 2. If possible, predict words to fit into the blanks. 3. Insert every answer choice into the blanks and reread the resulting sentences. The following sections explain these steps in detail.
Read the entire sentence Although this advice may seem obvious, many people read until they get to the first blank and then head for the answers. The problem is that the sentence may change in midstream, messing everything up. Note, for example, the big difference between these two sentences: Having been coerced by her mother into accepting a blind date, Mitzi was - - - - because Marty turned out to be - - - -. — and — Having been coerced by her mother into accepting a blind date, Mitzi was - - - - although Marty turned out to be - - - -. In the first example, you may want to say something like this: Having been coerced by her mother into accepting a blind date, Mitzi was ecstatic because Marty turned out to be gorgeous. In the second example, you can say the following: Having been coerced by her mother into accepting a blind date, Mitzi was content although Marty turned out to be mediocre. How you fill in the blanks depends on the middle term — in this case, the conjunction because or although. Keep in mind that the purpose of Sentence Completion questions is to measure your ability to recognize words and phrases that logically complete the meanings of the sentences.
If possible, predict words to fit the blanks Notice the careful hedge “if possible.” You can’t always predict words. But you can usually get pretty close. Consider the following example: Hal was - - - - when his new computer arrived because he realized he’d have no excuses now for not finishing his homework.
Chapter 8: Finishing What You Start: Sentence Completions You can predict that the word should be something negative such as depressed, sad, or unhappy. (If your vocabulary is up to the task, you can also predict negative words such as lachrymose, dolorous, and lugubrious.) Predicting words in advance helps you eliminate obvious wrong choices. Did you predict something positive such as happy or glad? If you did, you probably headed for the answers before you read the entire sentence. What did we just tell you in the preceding section? Tsk, tsk.
Insert the answer choices Occasionally, you can eliminate answers because you know the word must be positive and the answer choice is negative. After you eliminate all the choices you can, insert the remaining answers into the blanks and read through the resulting sentences. You need to plug and chug. Don’t try to save time by hurrying through Sentence Completion questions. Plug in every answer choice and chug through the whole darn sentence again. Try the following example: As a public relations specialist, Susan realizes the importance of - - - - and - - - - when dealing with even the most exasperating tourists. (A) dignity . . . etiquette (B) fantasy . . . realism (C) kindness . . . patience (D) courtesy . . . compassion (E) truth . . . honesty Because the two blanks are connected by and, the words in those blanks should be synonyms (or almost synonyms). They may not need to mean exactly the same thing, but they certainly shouldn’t be opposites. They should be on the same wavelength. That means you can eliminate Choice B because fantasy and realism are opposites. That’s the only answer, however, that you can eliminate immediately. The others are all close enough in meaning to fit together. This quandary leaves you with no choice but to plug and chug. Insert every answer and see which one makes the most sense. The right answer here is Choice C. Choice A looks pretty good, but you don’t “treat someone with etiquette.” Etiquette is a system of rules for manners. Choice D also looks pretty good, but a public relations specialist is expected to be businesslike, so compassion is a less likely attribute than patience. Also, treating with compassion someone who is exasperating isn’t as logical as treating the person with patience. Choice E is very tempting until you plug it into the sentence. Truth and honesty are synonyms, but they don’t fit as well in the context of the sentence as do kindness and patience. Correct Answer: Choice C. Forget about taking a lot of shortcuts. After you eliminate the obviously incorrect answers, take your sweet time going back and inserting every remaining answer into the sentence. Sentence Completion answers aren’t right or wrong so much as good, better, or best. Sometimes all the answers seem to sorta fit; your job is to choose the one that fits best.
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Blowing Sentences Away: Dynamite Traps ’n’ Tricks Let us introduce you to the nasty little gremlins lurking in the Sentence Completion questions and give you some suggestions for dealing with them. Your basic course of action is as follows: 1. Look for key connecting words that may change the meaning of the sentence. 2. Predict positive or negative words to fit in the blanks. 3. Don’t waste time scratching your head over questions with vocabulary that’s totally unfamiliar to you — make a guess and go on to the next question. The following sections delve further into these steps.
Remember that connections count Changing and to or or because to however can change everything, as this example shows: Buzz was content to - - - - and - - - - on his weekend, answering to no one but himself, doing exactly as he liked. Perhaps you’d fill the blanks with rest . . . relax. You know that the concepts are synonyms. Now check this version out: Buzz was content to - - - - or - - - - on his weekend, answering to no one but himself, doing exactly as he liked. The or changes everything. You no longer know for sure that the concepts must not be opposites; you only know that they might be opposites. You may fill the blanks with sleep . . . party or perhaps work . . . play. However, you can just as easily say that “Buzz was content to fish or hunt on his weekend, answering to no one but himself, doing exactly as he liked.” Be careful on these and and or questions, because they can be tricky. Some common connecting words are although
and
because
but
but for
despite
either/or
however
in spite of
moreover
nonetheless
or
therefore Whenever you see the preceding words, your antennae should go up, putting you on the alert for a plot twist — a trap of some sort.
Use your crystal ball Sometimes the sentences are so long and convoluted (twisting or turning) that you can’t make heads or tails of them. In that case, dissect the sentence. (A sentence so confusing probably makes you sanguinary, or bloodthirsty, enough to want to dismember something right about
Chapter 8: Finishing What You Start: Sentence Completions then.) Isolate just a bit of the sentence around the blank and try to predict whether that blank requires a positive or negative word. Consider the following: “Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah,” Frances cursed - - - -. Because people rarely curse or swear nicely, you can predict that the blank must be filled with a negative word. Maybe Frances curses harshly, rudely, or viciously (or stridently, stentorianly, or fulminatingly). You can eliminate answer choices such as sweetly, kindly, or courteously (as well as benignly, amiably, or decorously).
Guess and go Many times you can get the right answer in Sentence Completion questions by the process of elimination. You may have a hazy idea what type of word (positive or negative) or words (antonyms or synonyms) go into the blank or blanks. But what happens if you can’t eliminate any answers because you don’t know what any of the words mean? Hit the road, Jack. Get outta there fast. If you’re making a wild guess anyway, why spend time deliberating over it? Guess and go! Although she usually was of a cheerful nature, Patty was - - - - when she heard the history professor assign a paper that would be due the first day back after spring break. (A) ebullient (B) indolent (C) supercilious (D) enigmatic (E) lugubrious Okay. You know that the blank needs to be filled with a word that means sad, gloomy, or glum. So far so good. But then you get to the answer choices, and life as you know it ceases to exist. You don’t know any of those words. You can’t get this one right except by randomly guessing. Fill in something, anything, and zoom on to the next question.
A vocabulary-helper bonus You’re no doubt delighted to know that roots, prefixes, and suffixes (RPS) help you immensely on the Sentence Completion vocabulary, just as they do on the Analogies and Antonyms sections. If you don’t know what the words mean, use your RPS to figure them out (see Chapter 4 and this chapter’s “Getting Back to Your Roots” section for more on RPS). For example, consider the following sentence: Jane refused to eulogize Donald, saying that she thought he was a - - - - fellow. Obviously, the entire sentence depends on the meaning of eulogize. If it means something bad, Jane refused to bad-mouth Donald and thought that he was a swell fellow. If it means something good, Jane refused to say anything good about Donald, thinking he was a bad fellow. Which is it? As you may recall, eu- (along with
ben- and bon-) means good. You also probably picked up the suffix -ize, which means to make. And log means speech or talk. You can therefore reason that to eulogize means to make good speech or talk. If she refused “to make good speech or talk” about Donald, she didn’t like him. Fill the blank with a bad word, such as rotten, terrible, or disgusting. Try this one: Ashamed of his obvious trembling and - - - - when confronted by the farmer’s wife, Blind Mickey told his two good friends, “I thought I was a man, but I’m just a mouse.” Here, you need a word that means fear. The right answer may be trepidation. You can figure out the word if you know that the root trep means fear.
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions Leaving you hanging on this sentence would be too vicious, even for us. After all, we’re only unofficial test-makers, tyrants-in-training as it were. The correct answer is Choice E. Lugubrious means sad. As for the other words, ebullient means happy, overjoyed. Indolent means lazy, laid back. Supercilious means stuck-up, conceited. Enigmatic means mysterious, difficult to figure out. An enigma is a puzzle or a mystery, such as the enigma of how you ever got yourself into something as soul-leeching as this exam. Correct Answer: Choice E.
Getting Back to Your Roots This section is where you get to increase your vast storehouse of knowledge by adding some of the important roots (see Chapter 4 for a rundown of basic prefixes and suffixes). The following is just a short list, but it’s representative of what can greatly help you in figuring out GRE sesquipedalian (foot and a half long!) vocabulary words. If English isn’t your first language, vocabulary may be the hardest part of the exam for you. Using roots, prefixes, and suffixes can help you greatly. ⻬ ambu = walk, move: In a hospital, patients are either bedridden (they can’t move) or ambulatory (they can walk and move about). A somnambulist is a sleepwalker. Sommeans sleep; -ist is a person; ambu is to walk or move. A somnambulist, therefore, is a person who walks or moves in his or her sleep. ⻬ andro = man: Commander Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation is an android; he’s a robot shaped like a man. Someone androgynous exhibits both male (andro) and female (gyn) characteristics (literally, he/she is full of man and woman). Disturbingly, Marilyn Manson comes to mind. . . . ⻬ anthro = human or mankind: Anthropology is the study of humans (not just a particular gender but humans in general). A misanthrope hates humans. (An equal-opportunity hater: He or she hates both men and women alike.) ⻬ bellu, belli = war, fight: If you’re belligerent, you’re ready to fight — in fact, you’re downright hostile. An antebellum mansion is one that was created before the Civil War. (Remember that ante- means before. You can find this word in Chapter 4’s list of prefixes.) ⻬ cred = trust or belief: Something incredible is unbelievable, such as the excuse, “I would’ve picked you up on time, sweetheart, but there was a 75-car pile-up on the freeway.” If you’re credulous, you’re trusting and naive (literally, full of trust). In fact, if you’re credulous, you probably actually feel sorry for your honey being stuck in traffic. Be careful not to confuse the words credible and credulous. Something credible is trustable or believable. A credible excuse can get you out of trouble if you turn a paper in late. Credulous, on the other hand, means full of trust, naive, or gullible. The more credulous your professor is, the less credible that excuse needs to be. ⻬ de = down from, away from (to put down): To descend or depart is to go down from or away from. To denounce is to put down or to speak badly of, as in denouncing those hogs who chow down all the pizza before you get to the party. Many unknown words on the GRE that start with de mean to put down in the sense of to criticize or bad-mouth. Here are just a few: demean, denounce, denigrate, derogate, deprecate, decry. ⻬ ex = out of, away from: An exit is literally out of or away from it — ex-it. (This is probably one of the most logical words around.) To extricate is to get out of something. You can extricate yourself from an argument by pretending to faint, basking in all the sympathy as you’re carried away. To exculpate is to get off the hook — literally to
Chapter 8: Finishing What You Start: Sentence Completions make away from guilt. Culp means guilt. When the president of the Hellenic Council wants to know who TP’ed the dean’s house, you can claim that you and your sorority sisters aren’t culpable. ⻬ gnos = knowledge: A doctor shows his or her knowledge by making a diagnosis (analysis of the situation) or a prognosis (prediction about the future of the illness). An agnostic is a person who doesn’t know whether a god exists. Differentiate an agnostic from an atheist: An atheist is literally without god, a person who believes there’s no god. An agnostic is without knowledge, believing a god may or may not exist. ⻬ greg = group, herd: A congregation is a group or herd of people. A gregarious person likes to be part of a group — he or she is sociable. To segregate is literally to make away from the group. Se- means apart or away from, as in separate, sever, sequester, and seclusion. ⻬ gyn = woman: A gynecologist is a physician who treats women. A misogynist is a person who hates women. ⻬ loq, log, loc, lix = speech or talk: Someone loquacious talks a lot. (That person is literally full of talk.) A dialogue is talk or conversation between two people. Elocution is proper speech. A prolix person is very talkative. (Literally, he or she engages in big, or much, talk.) ⻬ luc, lum, lus = light, clear: Something luminous is shiny and full of light. Ask the teacher to elucidate something you don’t understand (literally, to make clear). Lustrous hair reflects the light and is sleek and glossy. ⻬ meta = beyond, after: A metamorphosis is a change of shape beyond the present shape. ⻬ morph = shape: Something amorphous is without shape. Morphology is the study of shape. (“Yes, of course, I take my studies seriously. I spend all weekend on morphology at the beach.”) ⻬ mut = change: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mutated, or changed, from mildmannered turtles to pizza-gobbling crime fighters. Something immutable isn’t changeable; it remains constant. Don’t confuse mut (change) with mute (silent). ⻬ pac = peace, calm: Why do you give a baby a pacifier? To calm him or her down. To get its name, the Pacific Ocean must have appeared calm at the time it was discovered. ⻬ path = feeling: Something pathetic arouses feeling or pity. To sympathize is to share the feelings (literally, to make the same feeling). Antipathy is a dislike — literally, a feeling against. For example, no matter how much the moron apologizes, you still may harbor antipathy toward the jerk who parked right behind you and blocked you in, making you late for a date and causing all sorts of unfortunate romantic repercussions. ⻬ phon = sound: Phonics helps you to sound out words. Cacophony is bad sound; euphony is good sound. Homophones are words that sound the same, such as red and read. ⻬ plac = peace, calm: To placate someone is to calm him or her down or to make peace with that person. You placate your irate sweetheart, for example, by sending a dozen roses (hint, hint). Someone implacable is someone you aren’t able to calm down — or someone really stubborn. If those roses don’t do the trick, for example, your sweetheart is too implacable to placate. ⻬ pro = big, much: Profuse apologies are big, or much — in essence, a lot of apologies. A prolific writer produces a great deal of written material. Pro has two additional meanings less commonly used on the GRE. It can mean before, as in “A prologue comes before a play.” Similarly, to prognosticate is to make knowledge before or to predict. A prognosticator is a fortune-teller. Pro can also mean for. Someone who is pro freedom of speech is in favor of freedom of speech. Someone with a proclivity toward a certain activity is for that activity, or has a natural tendency toward it.
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A fun word: Antepenultimate Most people know that ultimate means the last of something — Z is the ultimate letter of the alphabet. But which letter is the antepenultimate? Give up? It’s X. The ultimate is the last; the penultimate is the second to last; the
antepenultimate is the third to last (literally, before the second to last). Therefore, if you have three younger brothers, you can introduce them as your antepenultimate, penultimate, and ultimate siblings.
⻬ pug = war, fight: Someone pugnacious is ready to fight. A pugilist is a person who likes to fight — such as a professional boxer. (Did you ever see those big sticks that marines train with in hand-to-hand combat — the ones that look like cotton swabs with a thyroid condition? Those are called pugil sticks.) ⻬ scien = knowledge: A scientist is a person with knowledge. Someone prescient has forethought or knowledge ahead of time — for example, a prognosticator (a fortuneteller, remember?). After you study these roots, you’ll be closer to being omniscient — all knowing. ⻬ som = sleep: Take Sominex to get to sleep. If you have insomnia, you can’t sleep. (The prefix in- means not.) ⻬ son = sound: A sonic boom breaks the sound barrier. Dissonance is clashing sounds. A sonorous voice has a good sound. ⻬ sop = sleep: A glass of warm milk is a soporific. So is a boring professor. Enough for now. You’ll find no paucity (lack or scarcity) of roots to learn, but the preceding ones should provide you with a good foundation.
A Sense of Completion: Review Before you go on to the practice questions in Chapter 9, take some time to review the following approaches and tricks presented earlier in this chapter.
Approaches 1. Read the entire sentence for its gist. 2. If possible, predict words to fit into the blanks. 3. Insert every answer choice into the blanks and reread the resulting sentences.
Tricks ⻬ Look for key connecting words that may change the meaning of the sentence. ⻬ Predict positive or negative words to fit in the blanks. ⻬ Guess quickly on questions with answers that depend entirely on unknown vocabulary. And, of course, you want to remember that using a few basic RPS (roots, prefixes, and suffixes) can help you figure out killer vocabulary.
Chapter 8: Finishing What You Start: Sentence Completions
A whale of an exam Question: What do the GRE and Moby-Dick have in common? Answer: They both feature the following vocabulary.* prodigious
fathom
ruefully
blunder
fastidious
tyro
antediluvian
wretched
omnipotent
voracious
incensed
cadge
heinous
precipice
descry
effulgent
inert
leviathan
floundering
disparaging
sagacious
depict
incredulous
superficial
conflagration
dogged
indiscriminate
* Oh sure, you can probably think of other commonalties, such as (1) no one ever finishes either one, and (2) they’re leading causes of migraine headaches, and so on. But honestly, this is the real answer: All these GRE words are found in Moby-Dick.
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Chapter 9
Reality Check: Sentence Completion Practice Questions
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t’s that time again — when you use it or lose it. Answering the following questions should reinforce what you learned in the preceding chapter about Sentence Completion questions. We made these sentences much more amusing, in our opinion, than the deadly dull ones on the actual GRE, but the difficulty level and the vocabulary are the same. 1. Although dismayed by the pejorative comments made about her inappropriate dress at the diplomatic function, Judy - - - - her tears and showed only the most calm and - - - - visage to her critics. (A) obviated . . . agitated (B) suppressed . . . placid (C) exacerbated . . . unfazed (D) monitored . . . incensed (E) curtailed . . . articulate If Judy had a calm and (something) visage (a visage is a countenance, a facial expression), the (something) must go hand in hand with calm. Although it doesn’t have to be an exact synonym, the second word can’t be an antonym either. Look for a word that means calm. Placid means calm and tranquil, as you know from the root plac, meaning peace. Check the rest of the second words. Agitated means upset or worried, just the opposite of what you’re looking for. Unfazed may be good because it means not bothered by. (Erudite types are unfazed by seeing how that word is spelled, knowing that unphased is a trap often found on grammar exams.) Incensed means upset, burning mad (think of burning incense). Articulate means wellspoken. Her visage, or facial expression, wouldn’t be well-spoken, although Judy herself may be. So, you’ve narrowed the answers down to Choices B and C based on the second words alone. Now check out the first words. To exacerbate is to make worse. Words as hard as this one can exacerbate your headache. But if you chose this answer, you let your insecurity complex get the better of you. It’s normal to think, “Oooh, big hard word; it must be the right answer.” We’re not saying that these questions don’t feature hard words, but the difficult words may be the trap answers, not the correct answers. Suppress means to hold back and fits the sentence perfectly. Correct Answer: Choice B. Take a quick look at some of the other vocabulary. To obviate is to prevent, as in your learning these words now obviates your falling for traps and choosing them later. To curtail is to shorten. (Think of cutting off the tail of a word when you curtail it.)
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Did you take note of the word although? A key word like that can change the meaning of the entire sentence. If it weren’t there, you may think that Judy in fact burst out crying from the criticism instead of holding back. 2. Although there are those writers who carp and - - - - about the current depressed state of our economy, many people insist that such writers don’t speak for the common man (or woman) who believes in the - - - - of the nation and the security of its future. (A) lampoon . . . uniformity (B) grouse . . . resilience (C) complain . . . morbidity (D) laud . . . strength (E) ridicule . . . chaos As we advise in Chapter 8, try to predict the words that fit into the blank or, failing that, predict the sense (positive or negative) of the words. Here, you can predict that the first word must be something bad (because the writers are carping, or griping, about a depressed economy) and that the second word must be something good (because the average man or woman believes in the future of the country). Eliminate all second words that aren’t good: morbidity (meaning the presence of disease) and chaos (meaning confusion and disorganization). Eliminate all first words that aren’t negative: laud (meaning to praise, as in to applaud). Now you’ve narrowed the choices down to just two. To lampoon is to ridicule (think of the satirical magazine National Lampoon). That may fit, but the second blank doesn’t make much sense. Sure, it’s good to believe in the uniformity, or unity, of a country, but that’s not related to worrying about the depressed state of its economy. Choice B, grouse, is to complain or grumble. (The poet Dorothy Parker wrote a great stanza that says, “Cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse/I ponder on the narrow house/I shudder at the thought of men/I’m due to fall in love again!”) And resilience is elasticity, the state of springing back. The average person thinks the economy will stage a comeback. Correct Answer: Choice B. 3. The speaker, ironically, - - - - the very point he had stood up to make, and hurriedly sat down, hoping no one had caught his - - - -. (A) prognosticated . . . summation (B) divulged . . . information (C) refuted . . . solecism (D) duplicated . . . duplicity (E) ferreted out . . . mistake Predict that the second blank must be something negative, as the speaker hoped no one had noticed it. That eliminates Choice A (a summation is just what it looks like, a summary, and isn’t necessarily bad) and Choice B (information is also neutral). Now try the sentence with the remaining answer choices inserted. To refute is to disprove or show to be false. It’d be ironic (the opposite of what’s expected) if the speaker were to disprove the very point he stood up to make. A solecism is an inconsistency, a mistake. Correct Answer: Choice C. Take a moment to go through the other words to increase your vocabulary. (As you realize by now, you can narrow down many of the Sentence Completion questions to just two or
Chapter 9: Reality Check: Sentence Completion Practice Questions three answers through the process of elimination. But to get the one right answer, you have to know the words.) To prognosticate is to predict. Pro- means before; gnos means knowledge; -ate means to make. To prognosticate is to “make knowledge before,” to predict. If you picked Choice A, you probably fell for the trap of looking only at the answer choices and not reinserting them into the sentence. Yes, something ironic is the opposite of what’s expected, and a prognostication is the opposite of a summation, but that answer doesn’t fit when reinserted into the sentence. Be sure to take your time and go back to the sentence with each answer choice. The Sentence Completion section isn’t a place to try to save seconds. In Choice B, to divulge is to reveal. That first word works, but the second one doesn’t. It’s not ironic to divulge the very information you stand up to say; it’s normal. In Choice D, duplicity is an interesting word. The root dup means double, but duplicity isn’t “doubleness” in the sense of two of something. Duplicity is deception, being two-faced. A traitor is noted for his or her duplicity. And in Choice E, to ferret out is to search diligently, as a detective ferrets out clues to help his client. You ferret out the tips and traps scattered throughout these explanations to help you remember them. 4. Although often writing of - - - - activities, Emily Dickinson possessed the faculty of creating an eclectic group of characters ranging from the reticent to the epitome of - - - -. (A) questionable . . . taciturnity (B) mundane . . . effrontery (C) egregious . . . discretion (D) horrific . . . stoicism (E) commensurate . . . composure If you know that reticent means shy and holding back, you can predict that the second blank must be the opposite of that, something bold and forward. Effrontery is shameless boldness and audacity. You have effrontery when you ask your boss for a raise right after he or she chews you out for bungling a project and costing the company money. Effrontery is the only second blank that fits. Taciturnity is the noun form of the word taciturn, meaning quiet, not talkative, not forward. Stoicism is not showing feelings or pain. Only a stoic can look at words such as these without shrieking or ripping out her hair. Turning to the first blanks, mundane means common, worldly. Mundane activities are day-today tasks, nothing exciting like winning a lottery or visiting Antarctica. Egregious means terrible or flagrant. An egregious mistake is right out there for the world to see. Commensurate means equivalent to or proportionate. Your score on this section will be commensurate with your vocabulary. Correct Answer: Choice B. 5. Dismayed by the - - - - evidence available to her, the defense attorney spent her own money (even though that would leave her nearly - - - -) to hire a private investigator to acquire additional evidence. (A) dearth of . . . affluent (B) scanty . . . insolvent (C) vestigial . . . pecuniary (D) immense . . . bankrupt (E) impartial . . . penurious
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions Predict words to fit into the blanks. If the attorney is dismayed by evidence and hires an investigator to get more evidence, she must not have had much evidence to begin with. You can predict that the first word means not very much. Scanty means barely sufficient. A dearth of is a lack of. Those are the only two words that fit for the first blank. Vestigial means functionless, after much of the original has disappeared; for example, the tailbone of humans is a vestigial tail. Immense means large, just the opposite of what you want. The words even though tell you that spending her own money to gather the extra evidence would have a negative effect on the attorney. She was nearly insolvent, or bankrupt. Choice A, affluent, means rich, wealthy, or — as a smart-aleck friend of ours says — financially oversupplied. That doesn’t work — eliminate Choice A. In Choice C, pecuniary means consisting of or pertaining to money matters. This can be a tempting answer, because you know that the costs have to do with money as well. However, the first word definitely doesn’t fit in this sentence. In Choice E, penurious means poor, needy, or destitute. It fits the second blank, but the first blank doesn’t work with this answer. Impartial evidence is neutral, neither good nor bad. Correct Answer: Choice B. 6. Unwilling to be labeled - - - -, Gwenette slowly and - - - - double-checked each fact before expounding upon her theory to her colleagues at the convention. (A) precipitate . . . meticulously (B) hasty . . . swiftly (C) rash . . . desultorily (D) efficacious . . . haphazardly (E) painstaking . . . heedlessly The key here is pure vocabulary. You can probably predict the types of words you need, knowing that the first word must mean too fast and careless and the second word slow and careful. But if you don’t have a clue what any of the words mean, don’t waste time scratching your head over this one. Just guess and go.
Precipitate, hasty, and rash all mean overly quick, leaping before looking. Those words fit the first blank. Efficacious means efficient and effective, something Gwenette wants to be labeled. Painstaking means meticulous, careful, and attentive to detail, another good thing to be. Dump Choices D and E. You know the second blank must be something good. Meticulous means careful with detail, paying careful attention. It’s pretty much the opposite of swiftly (quickly), desultorily (aimlessly, not methodically), haphazardly (unsystematically, not methodically), and heedlessly (not paying attention). Correct Answer: Choice A. Even if you don’t know the exact meanings of the words, you often have an idea whether they’re positive or negative — whether they have good or bad connotations. If you sense that a word is bad when you need a good word, eliminate that answer choice. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how often your subconscious leads you to the correct answer. If you didn’t grow up in the U.S., you may not be able to sense the meanings (good or bad) of words. In that case, it’s even more important for you to make a quick guess and go on.
Chapter 10
Readings That Can Affect Your Future: Blood Pressure, Astrology, and the GRE In This Chapter 䊳 Covering the most common reading passages 䊳 Figuring out whether the questions are worth your time 䊳 Checking out some tips designed to save your sanity
M
ore feared by students than Monday’s mystery meat in the college cafeteria, Reading Comprehension questions on the GRE comprise 8 out of the 30 Verbal questions. The number can vary slightly, but in general, approximately 27 percent of your Verbal score is determined by Reading Comprehension questions. If you’re used to taking paper-and-pencil tests, the reading passages on the computer can be quite a challenge. On a paper test, you have the option of skipping around and finding a passage you like (for instance, maybe you prefer a science passage to a humanities passage). You also have the option of skipping a question and coming back to it later. Those options are gone with the computerized GRE. You get only one reading passage at a time, which means you can’t preview several and choose your favorite. Also, you must choose and confirm an answer before the computer will allow you to go on to the next question.
What Do They Look Like? Reading Comprehension Passages and Their Questions The origin of the misnomer (wrong name) “Reading Comprehension” is a great topic for a deipnosophist. (A deipnosophist is one who converses eruditely at the dinner table. Don’t worry; you don’t have to know this word for the GRE. We just threw it in so you can sound smart to your friends.) For now, you don’t care so much what the section is called; you just want to get through it. The following information presents an overview of the types of passages you may encounter, the best approach to each distinct type of passage, and tips and traps for answering the questions based on those passages.
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions Start by taking a look at what a Reading Comprehension question looks like: Which of the following best describes the tone of the passage? (A) sarcastic (B) ebullient (C) objective (D) saddened (E) mendacious All questions can be answered from information stated or implied in the passage. You aren’t expected to answer questions based on your own knowledge, and you don’t need to know anything special about science or humanities to answer these questions.
Acing the Three Commonly Tested Reading Comprehension Passages In their torture chambers over the years (would someone please call Amnesty International?), the test-makers have decided to write passages based on biological or physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The following sections offer a preview of the passages to help you separate the devastating from the merely intolerable.
Beam me up, Scotty! Biological and physical science passages A biological or physical science passage is straightforward, giving you the scoop on how laser beams work, how to build a suspension bridge, how molecular theory applies, and so on. Although the passage itself may be very booooooooring to read (because it’s full of just facts, facts, and more facts), this type of passage is often the easiest passage for people because it has so few traps and tricks.
Reading tip Time to talk reality here: You’re not going to remember — and maybe not even understand — what you read in a biological or physical science passage. It’s all just statistics and dry details. No matter how carefully and slowly you read through it the first time, you’re almost certain to need to go back through the passage a second time to find specific facts. You thus end up reading the passage twice. Why waste time? Zip through the passage to get a general idea of what it’s about and where the info is. (The first paragraph tells how molecules combine; the second tells how scientists are working to split the atom; the third tells. . . . ) You may want to jot down a one- or two-word note on your scratch paper to summarize each paragraph in a biological or physical science passage: Molecules. Atoms. Research. No need to waste time understanding every nuance if you can get the answer right by going back and finding the specific fact quickly. If you’re a slow reader, these types of passages can work in your favor because you’re not really reading them — you’re skimming them. You don’t have to understand what you read. You merely have to identify some key words. Bonus: What happens if you swallow a molecule of uranium? You get atomic ache!
Chapter 10: Readings That Can Affect Your Future: Blood Pressure, Astrology, and the GRE Question tip You can often answer biological or physical science questions directly from the facts provided in the passage itself. They’re rarely the inference type that requires you to read between the lines and really think about what the author is saying, what point he or she is trying to make, how he or she feels about the subject, and so on. Here’s an example of a typical question for a biological or physical science passage (flip to the later section “Toga, Toga, Toga! The Roman numeral question” for more on this format): The author states that spices were used I. to improve the taste of food. II. for medicinal purposes. III. to preserve food before refrigeration. IV. as a substitute for cash. (A) I and III only (B) I, II, and IV only (C) I, II, and III only (D) II and III only (E) I, II, III, and IV To answer the question, return to the passage and look for the specific answers — which should be easy to locate if you made those handy little notes during your first run-through (in this case, you may have made a notation stating purposes, which leads you straight to the right answer).
It’s not a disease: The social sciences passage The GRE usually includes one social sciences passage. It may be about history, psychology, business, or a variety of other topics. In other words, the term social sciences is broad enough to include whatever the test-makers want it to include. The social sciences passage is often the most interesting passage you encounter. It may give you a perspective on history that you didn’t know or provide insight into psychology or sociology that you can use to manipulate your friends. (Who says the GRE is useless?)
Reading tip In many ways, the social sciences passage is nearly the opposite of a biological or physical science passage. The questions here deal more with inferences and less with explicitly stated facts. Therefore, you must read the passage slowly and carefully, trying to understand not only what’s said but also what’s implied. Take some time to think about what you’re reading.
Question tip The questions that follow a social sciences passage may not be as straightforward as those for a biological or physical science passage. You may not be able to go back to a specific line and pick out a specific fact. Instead, these questions ask you to understand the big picture, or to comprehend what the author meant but didn’t come right out and say. You may be asked why an author included a particular example or explanation. In other words, you’re expected to be a mind reader. Whip out that crystal ball. Here’s an example of a typical social sciences question:
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The author’s primary motive in discussing Dr. Buttinski’s theory was to (A) impress the reader with Dr. Buttinski’s importance. (B) show that Dr. Buttinski overcame great odds to become a psychologist. (C) ridicule Dr. Buttinski’s adversaries who disagreed with the theory. (D) predict great things for Dr. Buttinski’s future. (E) evaluate the effect Dr. Buttinski’s theory has had on our everyday lives. Determining the author’s motive involves reasoning, not just reading. No sentence specifically says: “Okay, listen up, troops. I’m going to tell you something, and my motive for doing so is blah, blah, blah.” You need to read the passage slowly enough to develop an idea of why the author is telling you something and what exactly he or she wants you to take from this passage. Going back and rereading the passage doesn’t do you much good; thinking about what you read does. In this particular sample question, every answer given is probably a true statement based on the passage. That is, the author probably thought Dr. Buttinski was important, probably believed that Dr. Buttinski had to overcome great odds to be a psychologist, and so on. Keep in mind, however, what the question is asking: Why did the author mention this specific thing? You must probe the author’s mind.
Gimme a break, I’m only human: The humanities passages Humanities passages may be about humans (well, duh!) or about art, music, philosophy, drama, or literature. The passages are usually positive, especially if they talk about a person who was a pioneer in his or her field, such as the first African American astronaut or the first female doctor. Think about this statement logically: If the GRE bothers with writing about someone, that someone must have been pretty darn great or done something noteworthy. Keep this sense of admiration, even awe, in mind as you answer the questions related to the passage.
Reading tip Have fun with the humanities passages because they’re the only ones you may actually enjoy reading. You don’t need to zoom through ’em to finish before you fall asleep like you have to with the biological or physical science passages. Nor do you need to read ’em carefully for between-the-lines understanding as you have to with the social sciences passage. You can read this type of passage normally. Pretend that you’re reading an article in People magazine, for example.
Question tip Although the humanities passages don’t require meticulous, between-the-lines reading, the questions are another matter. The questions following a humanities passage often require you to get into the mind of the author in order to read between the lines and make inferences. While you’re reading a passage about a particular person, for example, you’re supposed to ascertain not just what the person accomplished but why she worked toward her goals and what mark she hoped to leave on the world. Here’s an example of a typical humanities question:
Chapter 10: Readings That Can Affect Your Future: Blood Pressure, Astrology, and the GRE It can be inferred from the passage that Ms. Whitecloud would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements? (A) A good divorce attorney must take the broader view and in effect represent the marriage itself rather than either of the spouses. (B) The job of a divorce attorney is similar to that of a psychologist, attempting to ascertain why the marriage failed and address that issue rather than just the legal issues. (C) The most important function of a divorce attorney is to protect the interests of the children of the marriage. (D) A divorce attorney’s job is merely to represent the legal interests of his or her client and does not include becoming a “friend” to the spouses. (E) A divorce attorney measures his or her success by how quickly the divorce is accomplished.
All or Nothing: Questions to Take Seriously; Questions to Laugh Off Knowing how to approach the GRE Reading Comprehension passages is extremely important. Even more important than the passages themselves, however, are the questions following them. After all, the admissions officer at Harvard isn’t going to say to you, “Hey, tell me about that GRE passage you read about the curative properties of heavy metal music.” The admissions officer is far more likely to ask, “How many questions did you answer correctly on the Reading Comprehension portion?” No matter how carefully you read a passage, no matter how well you understand it, you must be able to put that knowledge to work to answer the questions that follow it. So just what kinds of questions are you most likely to encounter in the Reading Comprehension portion of the test? The following sections describe the several basic Reading Comprehension question types you may face in the dark alleys of the GRE.
It’s the attitude, dude: The attitude or tone question The author’s attitude may be described as . . . The tone of the passage is . . . These two questions are variations on a single theme. What’s the tone of the passage or the attitude of the author? Nothing in the passage answers this type of question directly. You can’t find any one line reading: “In my opinion, which, by the way, is sardonic, the importance of. . . .” You simply must reason this one out. Table 10-1 lists the tone or attitude likely found in each type of Reading Comprehension passage.
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Predominant Tones or Attitudes Found in GRE Reading Passages
Passage Type
Tone or Attitude
Explanation
Biological or physical sciences
Neutral or positive
A biological or physical science passage gives you just the facts. The author rarely evaluates the facts one way or the other and rarely expresses an opinion. (After all, how opinionated can someone be about a color spectrum?)
Social sciences
Positive or neutral
A social sciences passage may be about how some event unfolded or how some theory was developed. For example, a passage may talk about history, presenting the good events and downplaying the bad ones. Think positive, or at the very worst, neutral.
Humanities
Positive or neutral
If the passage is about an individual, it’s probably positive, saying good and respectful things about that person and his or her accomplishments. If it’s about the other topics of humanities, such as art, music, philosophy, drama, and literature, it may be either positive or neutral. Very rarely does a humanities passage have a negative tone.
Do you notice a pattern here? Everything is either neutral or positive, positive or neutral. Because so many of the tones or attitudes of the Reading Comprehension passages are positive or neutral, certain words are often good to choose as answers to attitude or tone questions. With neutral passages, the term objective (which means neutral, not taking one side or the other, not subjective or opinionated) is often a correct answer. Don’t simply turn off your own brain and choose objective automatically, of course, but it’s a good guess if you’re stumped for an answer. Think of a passage as neutral until proven otherwise. Following are several common positive words. Each word is followed by a more unfamiliar term that has the same meaning:
Common Positive-Attitude Word
More Difficult Word with the Same Meaning
Optimistic
Sanguine
Praising
Laudatory
Admiring
Reverential
You get the idea. Wrong answers — that is, negative answers — may include the following words. Remember: These are words that you usually don’t want to choose.
Common Negative-Attitude Word
More Difficult Word with the Same Meaning
Ridiculing
Lampooning
Sarcastic
Sardonic
Belittling
Denigrating
Chapter 10: Readings That Can Affect Your Future: Blood Pressure, Astrology, and the GRE The answer choices to an attitude or tone question often use quite difficult vocabulary. If you know from reading the passage that the author is delighted with something, which of the following would you choose to describe his attitude: phlegmatic, dogmatic, ebullient, cantankerous, or lethargic? The right answer is ebullient, which means bubbling over with enthusiasm or excitement — but how many people know that word? It’s not as if your best friend asks you, “So, how are you today?” and your immediate response is, “I’m ebullient, thanks. And you?” If you don’t know the vocabulary in the answer choices, quickly make a wild guess and go on. Doing so can be very frustrating, because you know what kind of word you’re looking for, but when you can’t define the answer choices, all you’re doing is wasting time. Guess and go.
What’s the big idea? Main idea or best title questions You can bet the farm (but, of course, only in states with legalized gambling) that you’ll see a few main idea or best title questions; each Reading Comprehension passage usually has one. This type of question can assume any of the following forms: The main idea of the passage is . . . The primary purpose of the author is . . . The best title for the passage is . . . The best place to find the main idea of the passage is in its topic sentence, which is usually the first or second sentence of the first paragraph. The topic sentence may be the last sentence of the passage, but such a structure is rare. Your game plan upon encountering one of these questions should be to head right back to the first sentence to locate a main idea. Suppose that a passage begins as follows: The uses to which latex has been applied have exceeded the wildest fantasies of its creators. What’s the main idea of the passage: The uses of latex? The applications of latex? The many products made of latex? If you read the first sentence again, you notice that the writer is planning on writing more about the uses of latex. If you’re still unclear after reading the first sentence, check the entire paragraph to make sure that the author continues to write more about specific examples of the uses of latex. After you’ve read the entire passage, all the darn answers in the main idea question may look pretty good. That’s because they usually consist of facts stated in the passage. Just because something is true and just because it’s covered in the passage doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the main idea. Remember: The main idea is what the entire passage is about. It’s the overall concept and the purpose of the whole essay, not just one true fact contained somewhere within the passage. As for whether you should really try to answer main idea or best title questions, or whether you should just fly right by ’em, trust us, they’re definitely worth a few minutes of your time. Go back and reread the first few sentences. Even if you don’t have time to read the entire passage — or even get started on it — you can often hustle up an answer to this question by glancing at one sentence. Because Reading Comprehension passages are almost always positive or neutral, the main idea/best title is almost always positive or neutral, too. Eliminate any negative answer choices right away.
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The main idea of this passage is (A) the submission and shame of the Native Americans. (B) the unfair treatment of Native Americans. (C) how Native Americans are taking charge of their own destinies. (D) why Native Americans fail. (E) the causes behind Native American problems. Because all the answers but Choice C are negative, pick Choice C. Humanities passages are often about people who’ve beaten the odds — inspirational pioneers and leaders. The passage is certain to be very admiring of those people. Correct Answer: Choice C.
Don’t pester me with details: The detail or fact question One type of question very straightforwardly asks you about information that’s explicitly stated in the passage. If a question begins with the phrase “According to the passage,” you’ve hit a detail or fact question — which is usually a very easy question to answer correctly. All you need to do is identify the key words in the question, return to the passage, and skim for those words. The answer is usually within a few sentences of those key words. Take a look at a few detail or fact question examples: According to the passage, what two elements make up Drake’s Elixir? The key words are Drake’s Elixir. Go back to the passage and find the exact answer. According to the passage, why did Mr. Sanchez win a medal during the war? The key words in this question are Mr. Sanchez, medal, and war. Go back to the passage and find the exact answer. “According to the author” isn’t the same as “According to the passage.” The two phrases may look the same, but author questions are often more difficult than passage questions and aren’t as straightforward. A question that asks you about the author may be more of a readbetween-the-lines question — one you can answer only if you truly understand what you read. An “according to the passage” question, on the other hand, can often be answered by skimming for the key words even without reading the whole passage.
The power of positive thinking: Negative or exception questions One type of GRE question is a trained killer: the negative or exception question. Here are a few ways this question may be worded: Which of the following is not true? Which of the following is least likely? With which of the following would the author disagree? All of the following are true except . . .
Chapter 10: Readings That Can Affect Your Future: Blood Pressure, Astrology, and the GRE The questions are phrased in the negative, which makes them very tricky. You’re actually looking for four correct answers. Then, by the process of elimination, you’re supposed to choose the one that isn’t correct. It’s easy to get confused and even easier to waste a lot of time in this situation. That’s why negative or exception questions are good ones to laugh off and just guess at randomly.
Toga! Toga! Toga! The Roman numeral question A Roman numeral question looks like this: The author mentions which of the following as support for her argument against unilateral intervention? I. Economic considerations II. Moral obligations III. Popular opinion (A) I only (B) II only (C) III only (D) I and II only (E) I, II, and III Roman numeral questions are usually time-wasters. In effect, you must go back and reread almost the whole passage to find whether I, II, or III was mentioned anywhere. A common trap is to find I and II mentioned close together and then have III mentioned far down the passage. Most people find I and II and then when III doesn’t appear to be hanging around, they choose I and II only, going down the tubes. (Hey, maybe the test-makers get bonus points for every test-taker they snare with a trick, rather like a cop writing speeding tickets to meet his quota in a speed trap. Just a thought.) With a Roman numeral question, you have to make a commitment to rereading most of the passage just in case one of the concepts is floating around where you least expect it. If you aren’t willing (or able) to commit the time, forget about the question. Just make a random guess and go on. Bonus: What do you call a pig that won’t make a commitment? A hedge hog!
Journey into the deep: Text-referenced questions The GRE powers-that-be are about to do something nice for you. Consider the textreferenced questions as a guided journey back into the passage. On these types of questions, the test asks you to return to a specific part of the passage to define what the author meant in that section. This scenario can occur in two different ways. The first is by making direct reference to the line numbers to guide you to where you’ll find your information. The second is to highlight a specific portion of the passage for you to return to. Be prepared to get all line-referenced test questions or a combination of both line-referenced and highlighted sections. Following is an example of a text-referenced question with a line reference:
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The author refers to conditions in the ghetto (line 79) in order to (A) highlight the poverty and destitution that people live in. (B) demonstrate the failure of the government to recognize lower-class living situations. (C) illustrate an example of gentrification (renovate as to conform to middle-class aspirations) in the U.S. (D) offer solutions to classification in the U.S. (E) broaden the application of the term “ghetto.” If you had this question in the highlighted section, it’d read the exact same way, except the “conditions in the ghetto” would be highlighted and not referred to by line number. Whatever the case may be, you need to journey back into the text and read the sentence before the reference, as well as the referenced section.
The swing vote: Extending the author’s reasoning Although this last type of Reading Comprehension question has become increasingly rare, you need to be prepared to meet it. This type of question asks you to extend the author’s reasoning to another situation. The GRE may give you a situation that’s analogous, or similar, to the one described in the Reading Comprehension passage and then ask you to determine how the author’s reasoning would or wouldn’t work in the new situation. The tone or attitude of this type of passage may be positive, neutral, or negative. Here’s an example: Which of the following would the author most likely feel would be a valid issue to appear on a referendum, based on his argument in the preceding passage? (A) The right to die (B) Term limits for members of Congress (C) Expansion of the powers of the judiciary (D) Increased student involvement in college application processes (E) Tax rate increases This type of question may be ridiculously easy or annoyingly difficult. If you understand the passage well and understand the author’s reasoning, this question is simple. Sometimes you can answer this question without understanding the entire passage, as long as you have some general idea of the author’s purpose in writing the passage.
Reading passages you’ll never see on the GRE ⻬ Biological Science: Cannibalism and You: The Science of Pigging Out at a Barbecue ⻬ Social Science (Psychology): The End of Political Correctness: An Analysis of Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh
⻬ Social Science (Behaviorism): An excerpt from Confessions from the Funny Farm, Chapter Two: How the GRE Pushed Me over the Edge ⻬ Humanities: The Developer of the Prefrontal Lobotomy: “Inspiration Struck While I Was Studying for the GRE,” Says Famous Surgeon
Chapter 10: Readings That Can Affect Your Future: Blood Pressure, Astrology, and the GRE Don’t immediately choose an answer just because it refers to the topic covered in the passage. For example, the passage may be about education. The trap answer in the previous question would be Choice D. However, you’re asked to extend the author’s reasoning to an analogous situation. The situation can be about the right to die, congressional term limits, or just about anything else.
Something Up Your Sleeve: Tips for Making GRE Life a Little Easier Now that you know about the types of passages and the primary types of questions, it’s time for the fun stuff — a few tips you can use to beat the test-makers!
Be positive or neutral, not negative We’ll say this tip over and over until you’re exasperated enough to cut off our air supply: Because most of the Reading Comprehension passages are positive or neutral, most of the correct answers are positive or neutral. Because the test-makers don’t want to get sued for saying mean and vicious things about anyone, these men and women are generally sweet and charming (and probably go home, kick the dog, and evict a few widows and orphans just to get pent-up frustrations out of their systems after having to be so nice at work all day long). Be sweet and charming right back at ’em; pick the positive, goody-goody answer choices.
Choose answers containing key words The key words, often found in the topic sentence, are what the whole passage is about. The right answers usually feature those words. If the passage is about Chicano history, the right answer often has the words Chicano history in it. Don’t immediately choose an answer only because it has the key words in it, but if you can narrow the answers down to two, choose the one with the key words.
Be wishy-washy, not dramatic The test-makers realize that people have different points of view. They don’t want to be dogmatic (narrow-minded), saying, “This is the right way, the only way. Zip your lip and don’t argue.” They want to hedge their bets and leave some space for personal interpretation. And, of course, they don’t want to get sued. If you have two answers, choose the more moderate or wishy-washy of the two. Wimp out big time. Suppose you’ve narrowed the answer choices down to two: (A) The author hates discrimination. (B) The author is saddened by the discrimination and tries to understand its causes. Choice B is the kinder, gentler, wimpier answer; it’s also likely the correct one.
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Eponymous words An eponym is a word derived from the name of a person. For example, the cardigan sweater got its name from the Earl of Cardigan (who’d probably much rather be remembered for the garment than for his other claim to fame — he was the leader of the Light Brigade). Here are a few eponyms to add to your GRE vocabulary: ⻬ bowdlerize: To omit indecent words or phrases in a book or piece of writing (you bowdlerize a love letter before you let your roommate read it). In 1818, Dr. Thomas Bowdler, an English physician, published a ten-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays called The Family Shakespeare. He left out all the dirty parts. For example, instead of “Out, damn’d spot!” the line reads, “Out, crimson spot!” ⻬ boycott: You’d think that Mr. Boycott started the practice of boycotting, wouldn’t you? Just the opposite: He was the victim of the first boycott. Charles Boycott was a retired English army captain who refused to lower rents to his farmer tenants after a few bad harvests and was accused of exploiting the poor. The locals harassed him, stealing his crops and refusing to sell his products in their stores, until he was hounded out of the county. Today, when you refuse to have anything to do with someone, you’re said to boycott him or her. ⻬ Draconian: Extremely harsh and severe. When you tell your professor that dropping your grade one whole letter just because you turned in a report one day late is truly Draconian, you’re harking all the way back to about 620 B.C. Draco was an Athenian who wrote a code of laws that made nearly every crime punishable by death, even laziness and, uh, urinating in public. The word Draconian came to apply to any laws that were just too darn cruel or strict. ⻬ maverick: An individualist, an unconventional person. Samuel Maverick, who lived during the 1800s, was a Texas rancher whose unbranded cattle roamed
free. Maverick’s neighbors refused to hand back his strays, claiming that because they were unbranded, there was no proof they were his. The word eventually evolved into meaning anything “without a brand,” or unusual or unique. ⻬ Quisling: A traitor. Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian politician who turned traitor in World War II, siding with Hitler. He was shot by a firing squad at the end of the war, but his name lives on to torment GRE-takers. ⻬ simony: The buying or selling of religious or sacred objects or privileges. Simon Magus (who’s often described as a “reformed wizard” — great job description!) offered St. Peter and St. John money to give him their religious abilities. The word simony was especially popular in the Middle Ages, when people sold pardons, indulgences, and the like.
Bonus! You probably already know these words, but did you know they’re also eponyms? ⻬ diesel: A type of engine, named for Rudolf Diesel, a German engineer. ⻬ mausoleum: A large tomb or memorial, named for King Mausolus, King of Calia in ancient Greece about 370 B.C. ⻬ nicotine: The addictive stuff in tobacco, named for French diplomat Jean Nicot. ⻬ saxophone: A musical instrument, invented by and named after Adolphe Sax, a Belgian musician of the early to mid-1800s. ⻬ shrapnel: Fragments thrown out by a shell or a bomb, invented in 1802 by Lieutenant General Henry Shrapnel, an English army officer. ⻬ silhouette: Profile or shadow of a face, named after Étienne de Silhouette (1709–1767), a French finance minister.
The Final Paragraph: Review Take a moment to review the key points of this chapter before jumping into the practice questions in Chapter 12.
Approaches ⻬ Identify the type of Reading Comprehension passage: biological or physical science, social sciences, humanities.
Chapter 10: Readings That Can Affect Your Future: Blood Pressure, Astrology, and the GRE ⻬ Identify the type of question (for example, attitude or tone; main idea or best title; detail or fact; negative or exception; Roman numeral; text-referenced; or extending the author’s reasoning) and decide how much time to invest in it.
Tips ⻬ Be positive or neutral, not negative. ⻬ Choose answers containing key words. ⻬ Be wishy-washy, not dramatic.
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Chapter 11
Words to Help You Score: GRE Vocabulary In This Chapter 䊳 Preparing to study vocabulary 䊳 Reviewing the top 300 vocab words found on the GRE
Y
ou can’t get around it — you absolutely must know vocabulary to do well on the GRE. No matter how good your streetwise lingo is, the GRE is more concerned that you can speak with scholars, dude. Many of the words used on the GRE probably aren’t words you use on a daily basis, but you’ve probably heard them somewhere before. We can’t know for certain what words are going to appear on the test, but the odds are good that you’ll see some of the ones presented in this chapter.
The Long but Easy Journey: Studying Vocabulary Sure, you can stay up all night trying to cram 300 vocabulary words into your brain. But we bet you won’t remember even a quarter of ’em by the time you sit down at the GRE computer. The best approach to studying vocab is the turtle approach, slow and steady. To begin the studying process, write each vocabulary word on a flashcard. Put the word on one side and the definition on the other. At this juncture, you have options. If you picked up this book one month before the test, memorize ten words a day for the next 30 days. If you were smart enough to buy this book one full year before the GRE test, then (lucky you!) you only need to study about one word a day. Another helpful suggestion when studying vocabulary is to draw pictures on your flashcards. Visual cues are very helpful to the brain and often aid in the retention of definitions, especially if, unlike us, you have some artistic talent. Never fear if you’re not an artist! Just draw a picture of what the word means, coupled with the word’s definition, on the same side of the card. Stimulating your brain in as many ways as possible will help you remember the material faster and more accurately. You can also sing your way to a great Verbal GRE score. No, we don’t want you singing at the test site, but you might consider putting the definitions to music. You know how easily your brain remembers songs? Sometimes getting the darn song out of your brain is harder then getting it in! In fact, you probably can remember song lyrics and tunes going all the way back to your childhood. Now that’s retention! Just like creating visual images in your brain helps it retain info, the same is true for music. Pick a word and put the word and the definition to any melody you already know well, such as twinkle, twinkle little star, or row, row, row your boat.
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions If you have the gift of music, you can create your own songs and plug the vocab words and their definitions right into the lyrics. You can sing your songs anywhere! So what if Joe Nextdoor thinks you’ve lost it as you sing while washing your car? You’re the one going to grad school and leaving Joe Nextdoor . . . well . . . next door! Regardless of when you begin studying, make sure to do it every day. Revisit the words you think you already know. Knowing as much vocabulary as possible will help you immensely with the Verbal section.
The Paramount 300: Memorizing the Most Common Words This section features the 300 most commonly occurring words on the GRE. Of course, you need to know way more than 300 words for this test. However, for space considerations, we’ve included only the most popular words here. We recommend that you scour the Internet for additional GRE vocabulary words (they’re everywhere!) and then use your findings to supplement our list. With that said, get ready to dive in and start studying! 1. Aberrant: Abnormal; different from the accepted norm 2. Abeyance: State of suspension; temporary inaction 3. Abstemious: Characterized by a state of self-denial, particularly in the area of food or drink 4. Acrid: Bitter; harsh 5. Acumen: Keen; quickness of intellectual insight 6. Admonition: A gentle reproof 7. Amalgamate: To mix or blend together in a homogenous body 8. Ameliorate: To relieve, as from pain or hardship 9. Ascetic: Given to severe self-denial; practicing excessive abstinence 10. Assiduous: Persistent, unceasing 11. Astute: Keen; wise 12. Audacious: Fearless 13. Austere: Unadorned; severely simple 14. Aver: To avouch, justify, or prove 15. Banal: Trite; commonplace 16. Blatant: Offensively loud 17. Bolster: To support; to reinforce 18. Bombastic: Using inflated language; pompous 19. Burgeon: To grow forth; to send out buds 20. Cacophony: A disagreeable, harsh, or discordant sound or tone 21. Chicanery: Use of trickery to deceive
Chapter 11: Words to Help You Score: GRE Vocabulary 22. Coda: Concluding section of a musical or literary piece; something that summarizes 23. Cognizant: Aware; taking notice 24. Colloquial: Pertaining to common speech 25. Consternation: Panic 26. Contentious: Quarrelsome 27. Contrite: Penitent 28. Contumacious: Rebellious 29. Craven: Cowardly 30. Decorum: Orderliness and good taste in manners 31. Deleterious: Hurtful, morally or physically 32. Delineate: To represent by sketch or diagram 33. Deride: To ridicule; to make fun of 34. Derision: Ridicule 35. Desultory: Aimless; haphazard 36. Diatribe: Bitter or malicious criticism 37. Didactic: Pertaining to teaching 38. Dilatory: Causing delay 39. Disconcert: To disturb the composure of 40. Dissemble: To disguise or pretend 41. Dissolution: Breaking up of a union of persons 42. Divest: To strip; to deprive 43. Divulge: To tell or make known, generally of something secret or private 44. Dubious: Doubtful 45. Dupe: Someone easily fooled 46. Ebullient: Showing great enthusiasm or exhilaration 47. Efficacy: Power to produce an intended effect 48. Effrontery: Shameless boldness; impudence 49. Egress: Exit 50. Elegy: A poem lamenting the dead 51. Elicit: To extract without violence; to learn through discussion 52. Embellish: To add attractive and ornamental features 53. Emulate: Imitate 54. Engender: To produce 55. Enervate: To weaken 56. Ennui: Boredom 57. Ephemeral: Short-lived; fleeting 58. Equanimity: Evenness of mind or temper 59. Equivocal: Ambiguous
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions 60. Eradicate: To destroy completely 61. Erudite: Very learned 62. Eschew: To keep clear of 63. Esoteric: Hard to understand; known only by a few 64. Exacerbate: To make more sharp or severe; to make worse 65. Exculpate: To free from blame 66. Exigency: Urgent situation 67. Expatiate: To speak or write at some length 68. Extirpate: To root out; to eradicate 69. Facetious: Amusing 70. Fallacious: Illogical 71. Fatuous: Idiotic 72. Fervor: Ardor or intensity of feeling 73. Fledgling: Inexperienced 74. Foment: To nurse to life; to encourage 75. Forestall: To prevent by taking action in advance 76. Frugal: Economical 77. Fulminate: To cause to explode 78. Gainsay: To contradict; to deny 79. Garrulous: Trivial talking 80. Germane: Relevant 81. Goad: To urge on 82. Grandiloquent: Pompous; bombastic 83. Gregarious: Sociable; outgoing 84. Guileless: Without deceit 85. Gullible: Easily deceived 86. Halcyon: Calm 87. Harangue: A tirade 88. Harbinger: One who foreruns and announces the coming of a person or thing 89. Heresy: Opinion or doctrine subversive of settled or accepted beliefs 90. Homogeneous: Of the same kind 91. Hyperbole: Exaggeration or overstatement 92. Iconoclast: An image-breaker 93. Ignominious: Shameful 94. Impecunious: Having no money; broke 95. Impede: To hinder; to block 96. Imperious: Insisting on obedience 97. Imperturbable: Calm
Chapter 11: Words to Help You Score: GRE Vocabulary 98. Impervious: Impenetrable 99. Implicit: Implied 100. Importune: To harass with persistent demands 101. Impugn: To assail with arguments or accusations 102. Inadvertently: Unintentionally 103. Inane: Silly 104. Inchoate: Recently begun 105. Indolence: Laziness 106. Ineffable: Unutterable 107. Inert: Inactive; lacking power to move 108. Inexorable: Unrelenting 109. Innocuous: Harmless 110. Insouciant: Nonchalant 111. Intrepid: Fearless and bold 112. Inure: To harden or toughen by use, exercise, or exposure 113. Invidious: Showing or feeling envy 114. Irascible: Easily angered 115. Itinerant: Wandering 116. Laconic: Brief and to the point 117. Latent: Dormant 118. Laudable: Praiseworthy 119. Licentious: Wanton 120. Loquacious: Talkative 121. Lucid: Easily understood; clear 122. Magnanimity: Generosity 123. Malingerer: One who feigns illness to escape duty 124. Malleable: Pliant 125. Maverick: Rebel; nonconformist 126. Mendacious: Untrue 127. Metamorphosis: Change of form 128. Meticulous: Overcautious 129. Misanthrope: One who hates mankind 130. Mitigate: To lessen in intensity; to appease 131. Modicum: A small amount 132. Mollify: To soothe 133. Mordant: Biting 134. Morose: Ill-humored; sullen 135. Mundane: Worldly
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions 136. Nefarious: Extremely wicked 137. Negate: To cancel out; to nullify 138. Neophyte: Beginner 139. Obdurate: Stubborn 140. Obfuscate: To darken 141. Obsequious: Servile; ready to serve 142. Obviate: To make unnecessary 143. Odious: Hateful 144. Officious: Meddlesome 145. Onus: Burden 146. Opprobrium: Infamy; vilification 147. Oscillate: To waver 148. Ostentation: A display of vanity; showy 149. Palpable: Perceptible by feeling or touch 150. Paragon: Model of perfection 151. Parsimonious: Sparing in spending of money 152. Partisan: One-sided; committed to one party 153. Pathos: Having a quality that rouses emotion or sympathy 154. Paucity: Few 155. Penchant: Strong inclination 156. Penurious: Excessively sparing in the use of money; frugal 157. Perennial: Something long-lasting 158. Perfidy: Treachery 159. Permeable: Penetrable; porous 160. Pernicious: Tending to kill or hurt 161. Pervasive: Spread throughout 162. Phlegmatic: Not easily roused to feeling or emotion 163. Pious: Religious 164. Placate: To soothe; to bring from a hostile state to a calm one 165. Platitude: Trite or commonplace statement 166. Plethora: Excess; superabundance 167. Porous: Full of pores 168. Portend: Foretell 169. Pragmatic: Practical 170. Precarious: Perilous 171. Precipitate: Rash; premature 172. Precocious: Mature at a young age 173. Prescience: Knowledge of events before they happen
Chapter 11: Words to Help You Score: GRE Vocabulary 174. Prevaricate: To use ambiguous language for the purpose of deceiving 175. Proclivity: Natural inclination 176. Prodigious: Immense 177. Profound: Deep; not superficial 178. Proliferate: To grow rapidly 179. Propensity: Natural inclination 180. Prudence: Caution 181. Puerile: Childish 182. Pugnacious: Quarrelsome 183. Pungent: Stinging; sharp in taste or smell 184. Pusillanimous: Cowardly; fainthearted 185. Qualm: Misgivings; uneasy fears 186. Quibble: Minor objection or complaint 187. Quiescence: Being quiet or still; inactive 188. Quixotic: Idealistic; romantic to a ridiculous degree 189. Recant: To formally withdraw one’s belief 190. Recondite: Incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding; profound 191. Redress: To set right by compensation or punishment 192. Reprobate: A sinful and depraved person 193. Repudiate: To refuse to have anything to do with 194. Rescind: To void by enacting authority 195. Respite: Interval of rest 196. Reticent: Reserved; inclined to silence 197. Reverent: Respectful 198. Rhetoric: The art of effective communication 199. Rout: To drive out; to stampede 200. Ruminate: To chew over again; to think over 201. Sagacious: Wise 202. Salacious: Having strong sexual desires 203. Salubrious: Healthful 204. Sanction: To approve 205. Sanguine: Cheerfully confident; optimistic 206. Satiate: To satisfy or fulfill the appetite or desire of 207. Savor: To satisfy fully 208. Secrete: To hide away 209. Sedulous: Persevering in effort or endeavor 210. Seethe: To be disturbed 211. Seminal: Influencing future developments
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions 212. Shard: Fragment 213. Shirk: To avoid 214. Shoddy: Not genuine; inferior 215. Sinuous: Curving in and out 216. Skeptic: Doubter 217. Skittish: Lively; frisky 218. Slander: Defamation 219. Sloth: Slow-moving 220. Solicitous: Worried; concerned 221. Sonorous: Resonant 222. Soporific: Causing sleep 223. Specious: Seemingly reasonable but incorrect 224. Spendthrift: Someone who wastes money 225. Spurious: Not genuine 226. Stentorian: Extremely loud 227. Stigma: A token of disgrace 228. Stint: To be thrifty 229. Stipulate: To make express conditions 230. Stolid: Dull; impassive 231. Striated: Marked with parallel bands 232. Strut: A pompous walk 233. Subterfuge: Evasion 234. Supercilious: Careless contempt 235. Superfluous: More than what is needed 236. Supersede: To cause to be set back 237. Supine: Lying on the back 238. Tacit: Understood 239. Taciturn: Stern; silent 240. Tangential: Digressing 241. Tantamount: Equivalent in effect or value 242. Tawdry: Cheap 243. Temerity: A foolish disregard of danger 244. Tempestuous: Stormy; impassioned 245. Tenacious: Holding fast 246. Tenuous: Thin; slim 247. Tepid: Lukewarm 248. Thrall: Slave; bondage 249. Thwart: To frustrate
Chapter 11: Words to Help You Score: GRE Vocabulary 250. Titillate: To tickle 251. Torpid: Dull; sluggish; inactive 252. Tortuous: Abounding in irregular bends or turns 253. Tractable: Docile 254. Transgression: Violation; sin 255. Transmute: To change 256. Transparent: Easily detected 257. Transpire: To happen, to be revealed 258. Trepidation: Nervous feeling; fear 259. Truculence: Ferocity 260. Tutelage: The act of training or being under instruction 261. Tyro: Beginner 262. Ubiquitous: Being present everywhere 263. Umbrage: Sense of injury 264. Unassuaged: Unsatisfied; not soothed 265. Uncouth: Clumsy; dumb 266. Undermine: To weaken; to sap 267. Unerringly: Infallibility 268. Ungainly: Awkward; clumsy 269. Unison: Complete accord 270. Unruly: Disobedient 271. Untenable: Indefensible 272. Upbraid: To reproach as deserving blame 273. Vacillate: To waver; to fluctuate 274. Vagabond: Wanderer 275. Vainglory: Excessive; pretentious 276. Valorous: Courageous 277. Vantage: Position giving advantage 278. Vapid: Having lost quality and flavor; dull; lifeless 279. Variegated: Many colored 280. Vehement: Forceful 281. Venerate: To look upon with deep respect 282. Veracious: Truthful 283. Verbiage: Use of many words 284. Verbose: Wordy 285. Vicissitude: Change of condition or circumstances, generally of fortune 286. Viscous: Sticky; gluey 287. Vituperate: Overwhelm with wordy abuse
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions 288. Vociferous: Making a loud outcry 289. Volatile: Changeable 290. Warranted: Justified 291. Wary: Very cautious 292. Welter: Turmoil 293. Whimsical: Fanciful 294. Whorl: Ring 295. Winsome: Attractive 296. Wreak: Inflict 297. Writhe: Twist in coils 298. Yore: Time past 299. Zealot: Fanatic 300. Zeitgeist: Intellectual and moral tendencies of any age
Chapter 12
Practice What We Preach: Reading Comprehension Practice Questions
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his chapter features two reading passages and nine questions. For now, don’t worry about timing yourself. Try to identify each selection as one of the types of Reading Comprehension passages described in Chapter 10 (biological or physical science, social sciences, or humanities) and use the tips we gave you for reading that type of passage. As you answer the questions, try to identify whether each question is attitude/tone, main idea/best title, Roman numeral, and so on, and then try to recall any traps inherent to that type of question.
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Microbiological activity clearly affects the mechanical strength of leaves. Although it cannot be denied that with most species the loss of mechanical strength is the result of both invertebrate feeding and microbiological breakdown, the example of Fagus sylvatica illustrates loss without any sign of invertebrate attack being evident. Fagus shows little sign of invertebrate attack even after being exposed for eight months in either a lake or stream environment, but results of the rolling fragmentation experiment show that loss of mechanical strength, even in this apparently resistant species, is considerable. Most species appear to exhibit a higher rate of degradation in the stream environment than in the lake. This is perhaps most clearly shown in the case of Alnus. Examination of the type of destruction suggests that the cause for the greater loss of material in the streamprocessed leaves is a combination of both biological and mechanical degradation. The leaves exhibit an angular fragmentation, which is characteristic of mechanical damage, rather than the rounded holes typical of the attack by large particle feeders or the skeletal vein pattern produced by microbial degradation and small particle feeders. As the leaves become less strong, the fluid forces acting on the stream nylon cages caused successively greater fragmentation. Mechanical fragmentation, like biological breakdown, is to some extent influenced by leaf structure and form. In some leaves with a strong midrib, the lamina break up, but the pieces remain attached by means of the midrib. One type of leaf may break cleanly whereas another tears off and is easily destroyed after the tissues are weakened by microbial attack. In most species, the mechanical breakdown will take the form of gradual attrition at the margins. If the energy of the environment is sufficiently high, brittle species may be broken across the midrib, something that rarely happens with more pliable leaves. The result of attrition is that where the areas of the whole leaves follow a normal distribution, a bimodal distribution is produced; one peak is composed mainly of the fragmented pieces, the other of the larger remains.
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions
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To test the theory that a thin leaf has only half the chance of a thick one for entering the fossil record, all other things being equal, Ferguson (1971) cut discs of fresh leaves from 11 species of leaves, each with a different thickness, and rotated them with sand and water in a revolving drum. Each run lasted 100 hours and was repeated three times, but even after this treatment, all species showed little sign of wear. It therefore seems unlikely that leaf thickness alone, without substantial microbial preconditioning, contributes much to the probability that a leaf will enter a depositional environment in a recognizable form. The results of experiments with whole fresh leaves show that they are more resistant to fragmentation than leaves exposed to microbiological attack. Unless the leaf is exceptionally large or small, leaf size and thickness are not likely to be as critical in determining the preservation potential of a leaf type as the rate of microbiological degradation.
1. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage? (A) Why Leaves Disintegrate (B) An Analysis of Leaf Structure and Composition (C) Comparing Lakes and Streams (D) The Purpose of Particle Feeders (E) How Leaves’ Mechanical Strength Is Affected by Microbiological Activity Note that because the passage is talking primarily about leaves, that word needs to be in the title, which eliminates Choices C and D right off. Choice A is too broad; there may be other causes of disintegration that the passage doesn’t mention. Choice B is too specific. The passage mentions leaf structure, but that topic isn’t its primary focus. Correct Answer: Choice E. 2. Which of the following is mentioned as a reason for leaf degradation in streams? I. Mechanical damage II. Biological degradation III. Large particle feeders (A) II only (B) I and II only (C) I and III only (D) II and III only (E) I, II, and III The second paragraph of the passage tells you that “. . . loss of material in stream-processed leaves is a combination of biological and mechanical degradation.” Statement III is incorrect, because the passage specifically states that the pattern of holes is contrary to that of large particle feeders. Correct Answer: Choice B. 3. The conclusion the author reached from Ferguson’s revolving drum experiment was that (A) leaf thickness is only a contributing factor to leaf fragmentation. (B) leaves submersed in water degrade more rapidly than leaves deposited in mud or silt. (C) leaves with a strong midrib deteriorate less than leaves without such a midrib. (D) microbial attack is exacerbated by high temperatures. (E) bimodal distribution reduces leaf attrition.
Chapter 12: Practice What We Preach: Reading Comprehension Practice Questions Lines 31–33 tell you that it’s unlikely that leaf thickness alone affects the final form of the leaf. You probably need to reread that sentence a few times to understand it, but this is the type of question you should take the time to be sure you answer correctly — a detail or fact question. Choice B introduces facts not discussed in the passage; there was no talk of leaves in mud or silt. Choice C is mentioned in the passage but not in Ferguson’s experiments. Be careful to answer only what the question is asking; the mere fact that a statement is true or is mentioned in the passage means nothing if the question isn’t asking about that point. Nothing appears in the passage about high temperatures, which eliminates Choice D. (Did you know the word exacerbated? It means made worse — like the fact that this passage probably exacerbated your headache.) Choice E sounds pretentious and pompous — and nice and scientific — but again has nothing to do with Ferguson. To answer this question correctly, you need to return to the passage to look up Ferguson specifically, not merely rely on your memory of the passage as a whole. Correct Answer: Choice A. 4. The tone of the passage is (A) mesmerizing. (B) biased. (C) objective. (D) argumentative. (E) disparaging. You had to get this question correct. If you missed this question, please consider yourself totally humiliated. Correct Answer: Choice C. If you picked Choices A or E, you let your insecurities get the better of you: “Oooh, big hard word. I don’t know it. It must be the right answer!” Mesmerizing means hypnotic or captivating. You probably weren’t held spellbound by this passage (if you were, hey, get a life!). By the way, do you know who Franz Mesmer was? He was called “the father of hypnotism.” What we now know as hypnotism used to be called mesmerism, after Franz. (No extra charge for the fascinating facts.) Choice E, disparaging, means in a degrading manner, speaking slightingly of. Disparaging is a negative answer, and as Chapter 10 explains, GRE passages are rarely negative in tone. 5. The author most likely is addressing this passage to (A) gardeners. (B) botanists. (C) hikers. (D) mechanical engineers. (E) Adam and Eve. The passage is talking about microbiological activity affecting the strength of leaves. (You know this fact because you already answered a best title question on the topic — Question 1.) Although selecting Choice D is tempting, given the technical topic of the passage, mechanical engineers are usually more interested in machines than leaves. Botanists are the folks most likely to read this passage. The advice is probably too technical for gardeners, Choice A, and is waaaay too specific for hikers, Choice C. Choice E was added for comic relief. (If anyone needed to know how and why leaves disintegrate, especially fig leaves, it’d be Adam and Eve.) Correct Answer: Choice B.
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions
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Multinational corporations frequently encounter impediments in their attempts to explain to politicians, human rights groups, and (perhaps most importantly) their consumer base why they do business with, and even seek closer business ties to, countries whose human rights records are considered heinous by United States standards. The CEOs propound that in the business trenches the issue of human rights must effectively be detached from the wider spectrum of free trade. Discussion of the uneasy alliance between trade and human rights has trickled down from the boardrooms of large multinational corporations to the consumer on the street who, given the wide variety of products available to him, is eager to show support for human rights by boycotting the products of a company he feels does not do enough to help its overseas workers. International human rights organizations also are pressuring the multinationals to push for more humane working conditions in other countries and to, in effect, develop a code of business conduct that must be adhered to if the American company is to continue working with the overseas partner. The president, in drawing up a plan for what he calls the “economic architecture of our times,” wants economists, business leaders, and human rights groups to work together to develop a set of principles that the foreign partners of United States corporations will voluntarily embrace. Human rights activists, incensed at the nebulous plans for implementing such rules, charge that their agenda is being given low priority by the State Department. The president vociferously denies their charges, arguing that each situation is approached on its merits without prejudice, and hopes that all the groups can work together to develop principles based on empirical research rather than political fiat, emphasizing that the businesses with experience in the field must initiate the process of developing such guidelines. Business leaders, while paying lip service to the concept of these principles, fight stealthily against their formal endorsement because they fear such “voluntary” concepts may someday be given the force of law. Few business leaders have forgotten the Sullivan Principles, in which a set of voluntary rules regarding business conduct with South Africa (giving benefits to workers and banning apartheid in the companies that worked with U.S. partners) became legislation.
6. Which of the following best states the central idea of the passage? (A) Politicians are quixotic in their assessment of the priorities of the State Department. (B) Multinational corporations have little if any influence on the domestic policies of their overseas partners. (C) Voluntary principles that are turned into law are unconstitutional. (D) Disagreement exists between the desires of human rights activists to improve the working conditions of overseas workers and the pragmatic approach taken by the corporations. (E) It is inappropriate to expect foreign corporations to adhere to American standards. The main idea of the passage is usually stated in the first sentence or two. The first sentence of this passage touches on the difficulties that corporations have explaining their business ties with certain countries to politicians, human rights groups, and consumers. From this statement, you may infer that those groups disagree with the policies of the corporations. Correct Answer: Choice D. In Choice A, do you know the word quixotic? It means idealistic or impractical (think of the fictional character Don Quixote tilting at windmills). Although the president in this passage may not be realistic in his assessment of State Department policies, his belief isn’t the main idea of the passage.
Chapter 12: Practice What We Preach: Reading Comprehension Practice Questions Just because a statement is (or may be) true doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the correct answer to a question. The answer choices to a main idea question in particular often are correct statements, or at least plausible-looking ones, but this appearance doesn’t mean they’re the main idea. Choice E is a moral value, a judgment call. An answer that passes judgment, one that says something is morally right or morally wrong, is almost never the correct answer. 7. According to the passage, the president wants the voluntary principles to be initiated by businesses rather than by politicians or human rights activists because (A) businesses have empirical experience in the field and thus know what the conditions are and how they may/should be remedied. (B) businesses make profits from the labor of the workers and thus have a moral obligation to improve their employees’ working conditions. (C) workers will not accept principles drawn up by politicians whom they distrust but may agree to principles created by the corporations that pay them. (D) foreign nations are distrustful of U.S. political intervention and are more likely to accept suggestions from multinational corporations. (E) political activist groups have concerns that are too dramatically different from those of the corporations for the groups to be able to work together. When a question begins with the words “according to the passage,” you need to go back to the passage and find the exact answer. You’re told that “. . . businesses with experience in the field must initiate the process of developing such guidelines.” Great — but what if you don’t know the word empirical, which means based on experiment or experience rather than on theory? Keep reading. The rest of the sentence divulges the right answer. Don’t tune out as soon as you encounter a difficult word. Choices B, C, D, and E are all judgment calls. You’re assuming facts not in evidence, as the lawyers say. Although you personally may believe the statements in these answer choices to be true, they don’t answer the specific question. Correct Answer: Choice A. 8. Which of the following best describes the reason the author mentions the boycott of a corporation’s products by its customers? (A) To show the difficulties that arise when corporations attempt to become involved in politics (B) To predict the inevitability of failure of any plan that does not involve customer input (C) To disagree with the president’s contention that big business is the best qualified to draw up the voluntary principles of workplace conduct (D) To indicate the pressures that are on the multinational corporations (E) To ridicule the consumers for believing that their small boycott would significantly affect the sales of a multinational corporation This question is one of those mind-reading ones that we warn you about in Chapter 10. You’re expected to get into the author’s mind and understand why he or she said what he or she did. That consumers may choose to boycott follows closely the main idea of the passage, which is that the corporations have difficulty trying to explain themselves and their actions to all sorts of groups, including their customers. From that, you may infer that the point of the statement is to indicate the pressures placed on the corporations.
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Part II: A Word to the Wise: Verbal Questions Choice B seems logical; common sense tells you that a company that ignores its customers will probably fail. However, a strong, dramatic word like inevitably is rarely correct. Few things in life are inevitable, as we’ve said before: just death, taxes, and the GRE. Correct Answer: Choice D. 9. Which of the following statements about the Sullivan Principles can best be inferred from the passage? (A) They had a detrimental effect on the profits of those corporations doing business with South Africa. (B) They represented an improper alliance between political and business groups. (C) They placed the needs of the foreign workers over those of the domestic workers whose jobs would therefore be in jeopardy. (D) They will be used as a model to create future voluntary business guidelines. (E) They will have a chilling effect on future adoption of voluntary guidelines. Choice A is the major trap here. Perhaps you assumed that because the companies seem to dislike the Sullivan Principles, they hurt company profits. However, nothing was said in the passage about profits. Maybe the companies still made good profits but objected to the Sullivan Principles, well, on principle. The companies just may not have wanted such governmental intervention, even if profits weren’t decreased. If you picked Choice A, you read too much into the question and probably didn’t read the rest of the answer choices. In Choice E, the words chilling effect mean negative effect, or discouraging effect. Think of something with a chilling effect as leaving you cold. If your friend asks you to taste some soup because the dog loved it when she lapped up a few swallows, the statement about canine cuisine can have a chilling effect on your desire to taste the soup. Because few corporations have forgotten the Sullivan Principles, you may infer that these principles may discourage the companies from agreeing to voluntary principles in the future. Correct Answer: Choice E. In order to get this question correct, you really need to understand the whole passage. If you didn’t know what was going on here, you’d be better off just guessing and going. An inference question usually means you have to read between the lines; you can’t just go back to one specific portion of the passage and get the answer quickly.
Part III
Two Years of Math in a Handful of Pages: The Dreaded Math Review
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o, no, please don’t go get your pillow and PJs. We promise that this math review won’t put you to sleep. We’re not going to start at 1 + 1 = 2 and take you through every math concept you’ve learned since kindergarten; we have more respect for you than that. This math review neither insults you nor wastes your time. Here, we keep the instruction down to what you really need for the GRE. If you’ve been out of school for a while, don’t despair. After you go through the math review, do as many of the math problems as you can. The answer explanations review the formulas and concepts again and again and again; some of them are bound to come back to you.
Chapter 13
More Figures than a Beauty Pageant: Geometry Review In This Chapter 䊳 Checking out some angle-related tips and traps 䊳 Knowing how to handle triangle, quadrilateral, and polygon problems 䊳 Playing with points in coordinate geometry 䊳 Conquering common circle questions
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uestion: How can you learn geometry?
Answer: Do it by degrees! This chapter takes a “just the facts, ma’am” approach to geometry, telling you everything you need to know about angles, triangles, quadrilaterals, and circles.
An Angular Look at Geometry Angles are a big part of GRE geometry problems. Fortunately, understanding angles is easy after you memorize a few basic concepts. Oh, and here’s the best news: You don’t have to do proofs. Finding an angle is usually a matter of simple addition or subtraction. These three rules generally apply to the GRE: ⻬ You aren’t going to see negative angles. ⻬ You aren’t going to see zero angles. ⻬ It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll see any fractional angles. (For example, an angle won’t measure 451⁄2 degrees or 323⁄4 degrees.) On the GRE, angles are whole numbers. If you’re plugging in a number for an angle, plug in a whole number, such as 30, 45, or 90. In addition to these rules, here are a few more facts you need to know: 1. Angles greater than 0 degrees but less than 90 degrees are called acute.
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Think of an acute angle as being a cute little angle.
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Part III: Two Years of Math in a Handful of Pages: The Dreaded Math Review 2. Angles equal to 90 degrees are called right angles; they’re formed by perpendicular lines and indicated by a box in the corner of the two intersecting lines. l2 l2
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A typical GRE trap is to have two lines appear to be perpendicular and look as if they form a right angle. Don’t assume that’s the way it is. An angle is a right angle only if (A) you’re expressly told, “This is a right angle;” (B) you see the perpendicular symbol ( ⊥ ) indicating that the lines form a 90-degree angle; or (C) you see the box in the angle. Otherwise, you may be headed for a trap. b
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3. Angles that sum up to 90 degrees are called complementary angles.
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Think of c for corner (the lines form a 90-degree corner angle) and c for complementary. 4. An angle that’s greater than 90 degrees but less than 180 degrees is called obtuse.
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Think of obtuse as obese; an obese (fat) angle is an obtuse angle. 5. An angle that measures exactly 180 degrees is called a straight angle. 180°
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6. Angles that sum up to 180 degrees are called supplementary angles.
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Think of s for straight angles and s for supplementary angles. Be careful not to confuse complementary angles (c for complementary; c for corner) with supplementary angles (s for supplementary; s for straight). If you’re likely to get these types of angles confused, just think alphabetically. In the alphabet, c comes before s; likewise, 90 comes before 180 when you count.
Chapter 13: More Figures than a Beauty Pageant: Geometry Review 7. An angle that’s greater than 180 degrees but less than 360 degrees is called a reflex angle.
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Reflex angles are rarely tested on the GRE, but just in case you encounter one, think of a reflex angle as what’s left of a circular cake from which one slice (the acute angle) has been removed. The reflex angle makes up the rest of the circle when an acute angle is shown. 8. Angles around a point total 360 degrees.
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9. When lines cross, the angles that are opposite each other have equal measures and are called vertical angles. Note that vertical angles may actually be horizontal. Just remember that vertical angles are across the vertex from each other, whether they’re up and down (vertical) or side by side (horizontal).
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